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I was so excited. My husband and I closed on an amazing house resting on twelve square miles of mostly forested land. We got a great deal on the real estate because the house was unoccupied for some time and needed a lot of cosmetic work. The foundation and frame of the home were strong and sturdy, but the outside of the house needed to be painted and re-sided in some places.
It was going to take us a lot of work, but it was going to be well worth it when we were finished. We would have a nice two-story home with a partial attic as well as a large swath of land. It still astounded me that we purchased such a great piece of realestate, and for ten thousand less than what I recently inherited after my father’s passing. Here we were only now moving in and we almost owned it free and clear.
The drive was a long one. We followed a highway to a smaller, local road, which we then took until we reached the long dirt road that was our driveway. The trees and the underbrush lining the semi-gravel road created a tunnel of vegetation which both amazed and scared me. It looked like something one might see in a horror movie.
The long corridor finally came to an end, and we could see our house up ahead near the top of a gentle hill. My excitement amplified when I saw the house that was going to be ours for the rest of our lives. I looked over to my husband and I could see the joy on his face as he stared at the gray building ahead.
Although we could have paid for everything outright, we decided to finance a small portion of the home purchase so we could keep enough money to buy all the things we were going to need to make this place look like a palace. This being our first trip out here since closing on the property, we had our truck mostly loaded with food, sleeping bags and other items one might take camping with them. We also had some of our tools as well as several firearms. Being out here in the forest along for the first time, we wanted to make sure we had protection from wild animals if we needed it.
When we pulled up to the house, my husband and I unloaded everything in the truck. We brought all of the cleaning supplies to the room on the second floor that would become a guest bedroom. Making that room livable would be the first priority in turning this shell into a home. Once we had a room in which to live, we could continue our repairs on the master bedroom and the rest of the structure.
One thing I thought very unusual about this house was that there were deadbolts with key holes on either side in every single door in the house. Even the doors to the closets had padlocks on them. I assumed the reason must be to keep out squatters and vandals that may cause damage to the building. Still, I could understand having locks on the exterior doors, and even the bedrooms, but it made no sense to me to have them in the closet doors as well.
Before helping me with the cleaning, my husband went outside to get the generator set up and running. Until we could get the power company to run us some lines out here, we would be dependent on the two generators we had. One would last for sustained use, but the other was only meant to be used in small doses. Eventually, our plan was to have solar panels on the roof to help supplement our electricity usage.
We spent the entire first day cleaning that one single guest bedroom. It would still need repainting, new carpeting, and furniture. Our bedroom furniture we would bring once the room was suitable for it. There was no point in bringing everything now as it would only become covered in dust as we cleaned. Our hope was to get the bedroom ready enough that we could at least bring up our bed. Although we had sleeping bags, I had no desire to sleep on the floor any longer than necessary.
There was so much dust accumulated in just the one room, we had to replace the filter to the shop vac half-way through vacuuming as it became clogged. We were able to get the room clean enough so that, along with an air purifier we brought with us, the room was safely habitable for the night.
We ate a dinner of sandwiches and chips from our cooler as we had no means of cooking until we were sure the gas lines and everything on the stove were in proper condition. We were a young couple, and this almost felt like we were out roughing it somewhere in the wilderness. It was rather romantic eating under the light of a kerosene lamp.
Once we finished eating, I did what little cleaning up there was to be done as my husband went downstairs to lock all the exterior doors. By the time he returned I had our sleeping bags laid out and our pillows on the floor. He did not bother locking any of the doors in the interior of the house as we really did not think it was necessary.
I was having a difficult time getting to sleep. It was probably because we were in a new and very rustic environment, but I could not shake the feeling we were being watched. I took my key – all the locks in all the doors of the house used a single key – and locked the bedroom door. I was not sure if my husband was still awake or not, but he did not move if he was still conscious.
The moon was only a few days away from being full, and there was not a cloud in the sky. The bright moonlight shone into our bedroom through the curtainless windows. Since I was already up, I decided to go look out the window and look at the natural scenery in the bright light of the moon. Standing not fifty feet from our house was a large deer or possibly an elk. My husband and I were both hunters, and never in my life had I seen a specimen as large as this one.
This massive deer appeared to be looking back up at me as I stood at the bolted window. It was just an animal, but I was positive it was aware of my presence. I was not sure if I wanted to know what it was thinking or not. As large as this thing was, I figured the animal must be an elk. They were not very common in this area, but they were known to be spotted here and there.
The thing really gave me the creeps. I could not help but feel like I was looking at something intelligent, something sinister. I thought about waking my husband so he could see it too, but I decided against it. In all reality, I was fairly certain it was simply being in this old worn-out house for the first night that had me a bit skittish. There was no point in keeping my husband from getting a full night’s sleep simply because I was spooked by some animal in our yard.
Climbing back into my sleeping bag, I tried to get the large animal out of my mind. It took me close to an hour, but I finally managed to get back to sleep. When my husband woke me it was eight o’clock in the morning. Apparently, he was up since before dawn. I wondered how long after I fell back to sleep it was when he awoke.
As we were having some fruit and milk for breakfast, my husband began telling me about seeing something out the window this morning when he got up. He told me it looked like a large man wearing a helmet crafted from the skull of a large-antlered deer. When I told him I saw the same thing, but it was not a man. It was an elk. He told me that could not be it. Whoever this was stood on two legs and had some sort of sickle in its hand. I again told him what I saw, but he insisted what he saw was no animal.
Could it be possible we were talking about the same thing, or did we see two different entities, two different beings out on our lawn watching the house?
Eventually my husband began to doubt what he actually saw, as his version of what was outside was very peculiar. It made much more sense that it was an elk outside than it was a large man wearing a helmet made from an antlered skull. We stopped talking about the subject as we prepared to clean the entrance hall and living room. The movers would be here in two more days to bring us the rest of our belongings, and we had to have a clean place for them to put everything.
The living room, along with a couple of other rooms, still had some furniture from the previous occupants. They were covered in sheets of cloth which were themselves covered in a thick layer of dust. As we got parts of the room cleaned, we removed the sheets so we could see what was underneath. Both of us were shocked to find the beautiful antiques hidden under the blankets of cloth. I was somewhat surprised the previous occupants did not take this furniture with them, but I guessed they were not as antique then as they were now.
We worked through the day and did not finish until it was dark. Without electricity and working lights, it was simply too difficult to try to clean in the dark. Once again, we retreated to what would eventually be a guest bedroom for the night. Yet again we feasted on sandwiches and chips. I could not wait until we got our propane tank filled and the gas lines tested. There was no need for heat, but hot water and a freshly cooked meal would be so nice right now. Someone was supposed to come to work on the gas lines in three days and someone else two days after that to try to get the well running. Until then, we would continue to eat sandwiches, chips and fruit for every meal.
We both woke with a jump and quickly climbed out of our sleeping bags when we heard something loud coming from downstairs. It was a loud bang, and we were not sure if it came from the inside or from the outside. Picking up the revolvers we were keeping beside us as we slept, my husband and I slowly walked to the window to see if there was anything out there. Before we reached the glass pane, we again heard the loud bang come from downstairs. This time we were both sure the sound was being made by something outside the house and not from the inside.
When we finally got to the window, we watched a large bull elk backing away from our front porch. The animal was trying to bust down our front door. If the door was a modern one and not a thick, hand-made door, the creature probably would have broken it open by now. Scratching its feet on the ground, it looked as though it was about to ram the door for a third time.
It must have somehow sensed us observing it, because the burly creature stopped kicking at the dirt and turned its head up to look at us. The bull elk stared at us as we kept our gaze fixed on it. I almost got the feeling the massive animal was trying to communicate something to us, but what that message was I could not say.
Being caught up in the animal’s gaze, it was hard to say how long we stared at each other. The elk shook its head, waving its massive antlers through the air, let out a snort, turned and ran back into the forest. My husband and I continued to stand at the window staring into the dark forest. We were both in something of a daze, our minds struggling to comprehend what happened.
When we finally came to our senses, my husband pointed out something I did not notice. It was approaching the middle of the month of May, and the elk still had its antlers. It should have shed them in the early spring, but here it was early summer and the elk still had not lost its antlers.
For the next hour, we discussed what we thought might be happening. Trying to think of a logical reason a large animal like that would be attempting to break into our home was next to impossible. We could not come up with any good, rational reasons the animal acted the way it did. There was no way we could know if the creature was trying to harm us, warn us or simply scare us away.
Whatever the animal’s reasoning was, we were both terrified. The thing was so large, I did not think it could even fit its rack through the front door if it did bust the door down. I could not imagine what could be inside the house that would cause it to try to break in. Bull elk were known for being aggressive, but that was always in the wild when someone invaded its territory. I never heard of one attacking a house.
As frightened as we were, we were even more tired than that. Spending the entire day cleaning that one room and eating such meager meals had us exhausted. We set the cases containing our hunting rifles beside our sleeping bags and undid the latches so we could get to them quickly if we needed to. Our holstered pistols were already close to our pillows.
Pulling our sleeping bags closer together after my husband secured the padlock, we climbed back inside and allowed ourselves to drift back to sleep. I was glad to see that it was already daylight when I woke up in the morning. My husband was sitting on the trunk containing all the clothes I had with me, having carried it over to the window. He had his hunting rifle out and resting in his lap. When he heard me beginning to stir, he placed his gun in its case and came over to me.
We were both frightened and searching for a rational explanation for what happened last night. There was simply no reason of which we could think that would cause that bull elk to try to break into our front door. Even if it was not trying to get into our house, we still could not find a reason for it doing what it did. Its behavior was very out of character for an elk. Being seasoned hunters, it deeply disturbed us to see the animal behave in a way so far outside of its nature.
The best explanation we could conceive was that the animal was sick, perhaps even rabid, and this was causing its strange behavior. If that was in fact the case, we may be looking at an outbreak in the forest animals. For right now we were going to be careful to avoid straying too far from the house or truck, and making sure we had a pistol on our hip while we were awake.
The damage to the door was not as serious as we expected. We thought we would find gouge marks made by the elk’s massive antlers, but there were no scratch marks at all. I did not understand how that hulking animal could bang against the door yet leave no signs of damage. It was almost like something was pounding against the door with fists rather than antlers.
My husband was convinced the loud banging simply came from where the creature was landing on the front porch. That would make sense because the banging could be amplified by the hollow underneath the old wooden veranda. Although that was a believable explanation, I was still unconvinced. There was nothing outside our house that we could see, so we decided to continue working on getting the house ready to store our belongings.
It took some back-breaking work, but we finally got the living room clean enough to store our belongings while we worked on the rest of the house. We were both very tired and weary from all the cleaning, but we moved into the entrance hall and started working there. There were only a few hours of sunlight left, so we did not get to clean for long before it got too dark to see what we were doing.
Although we heard nothing strange during the night, neither of us slept very well. Every little creature outside making noise made us think that elk was back. It was difficult to drown out the nocturnal animals because we were so afraid of that large antlered creature returning. Both of us woke several times and checked the window to see if that giant stag was stalking us for a third night.
As much as we wanted to sleep in the next morning, we had to get the entrance hall finished before the truck showed up with our things. We were not sure what time it would arrive, but it was supposed to be here sometime today. The living room was cleaned, and the existing furniture moved out of the way, but we needed to get the entrance hall clean so things did not get covered in dust as they were carried in.
Working through until lunch without taking a break, we got the bulk of the cleaning done. The ice in our large coolers was all melted, and we finished off what luncheon meat we had remaining. I hoped the movers would show up in their truck soon because one of us was going to have to go into town to get some more food and ice. It was quite dreadful living out of ice chest like we were, but hopefully we would not have to endure it for too much longer. Our gas should be fixed in a few days, and we could run a small refrigerator from the primary generator.
When two o’clock in the afternoon arrived and the truck was still not here, we decided to go ahead and drive into town. I did not want to stay here by myself, and my husband did not want me driving all the way to town alone. We left a note on the door and the key under a rock for them if they arrived before we returned.
After driving all the way to the end of the road leading up to our house, we turned onto the paved road and began driving to the nearest grocery market. We were only on the asphalt road for ten minutes before we discovered why the moving truck had not yet arrived. The truck was jack knifed and in the ditch. I supposed we were fortunate the trailer was not overturned. We simply had to hope they had our things strapped down securely enough for the accident they experienced.
The three men driving the truck saw us coming and began waving their hands in the air. My husband pulled over and the two of us got out to make sure the men were okay. None of them were injured, so that was fortunate. One man told us they already called for someone to pick up the trailer and take it the rest of the way, but it was not going to be until tomorrow before they arrived.
Another one of the men, a tall slender fellow, said they had rooms reserved at the motel in town, but as of now they had no way of getting there. My husband told them we could give them a ride since we were already going to town, but they would have to ride in the back of the pickup. They had no problem with this as they were beginning to think they were going to spend the night sleeping in the slanted truck.
Before we got back in the cab, the first man asked if there was some kind of carnival going on around here. He then began to tell us how they ended up perpendicular to the trailer facing down into the ditch. He said he was driving the truck, and this man ran out into the road and stopped. The man who came running out of the woods was wearing a helmet with antlers that looked like it was made from the head of a large deer.
The driver did not have time to stop. He slammed his brakes as they were heading into a slight curve, and the truck jack knifed. The next thing they knew they were in the ditch and the large man was nowhere to be seen. That was three hours before we found them.
Neither my husband nor I said a word for the rest of the drive into town. I now began to think my husband was telling the truth when he said he saw a man standing out on our lawn that first night. I was sure he saw the large elk because that was what I saw, but these men confirmed that there was someone running around this forest wearing furs and a helmet made from the head of some antlered animal.
First we dropped off the three movers at the only motel in this sparsely populated community, then we went to the grocery store. It was not until we were loading the groceries into the truck that we began to talk. As we made the hour-long drive back to our house, we discussed the strange situation in which we found ourselves. I wondered if there might be a wild man living in the forest, and perhaps our arrival upset him for some reason. Maybe since the house and land was abandoned for so long, the wild man got used to having the run of the area undisturbed. My husband said that, if we had any more strange occurrences tonight, we would get the authorities to come out here to see if they could find anything.
When we got back to our house, we carried in the coolers and took them upstairs to our bedroom. My husband then went back downstairs and locked every single door from the exterior doors to our bedroom. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to find a reasonable explanation for things or if we were going to have to live with this fear and anxiety for the rest of our lives.
This time we hung a large sheet over the window . It would not provide much protection, but it would keep anything from watching inside. As we did before, we kept our pistols and hunting rifles next to our sleeping bags in case we needed to defend ourselves. I would not worry about an elk coming into the house and making it up the stairs. There is no possible way the animal I saw could fit with those massive antlers. If it was a person wearing a mask, that was something that could get into our house to cause us harm.
I woke once during the night, and I felt incredibly tempted to go peek behind the sheet hanging over the window to see if anything was outside. As difficult as it was to fight the urge to look, I remained zipped up in my sleeping bag unmoving. I drifted back to sleep sometime later, but how long I could not say with any sort of certainty. When I again awoke, it was light outside. By the deep orange tone of the sunlight, I would say it was only minutes past dawn. I laid there in my sleeping bag until my husband began to stir.
Afraid to go outside by myself, I had my husband walk me to the outhouse. It would be several months still before we had indoor plumbing. We had a water pump and sinks, but no toilets in the house. There was no man or giant stag waiting outside for us, but there were elk tracks that appeared to circle around the house multiple times. As I relieved myself in the old wooden outhouse, my husband looked for any tracks indicating where the elk approached or departed from the house. The only tracks he found ran in circles around our new home.
We were incredibly on edge as we waited for the movers to bring our things so we could start making this house our own. For the most part we continued cleaning the living room and entrance hall, keeping our long guns close at all times. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the horn of the replacement truck as it pulled up to our house. They would not be here long, but I felt a lot better having three more rather large men with us.
As they relocated the contents of the moving truck into our large living room, I worked on doing what cleaning I could. I did not really want to open another room and let the dust it contained into the hall until I could close the living room first. Until then, I located as many of the boxes for the bedroom as I could and began to unpack the things we needed to have out for our use.
Once the movers got the bed and the dressers up the stairs to the guest bedroom, I started getting the room situated and organized. Finding the curtain rods and curtains, I was more than eager to get them hung. I knew the thicker curtains would not provide any more protection from something coming in the window, but it gave me a small measure of comfort at least.
It took me an hour to get the curtain rods hung, and as I was sliding the curtains on, I gazed out the window to the far edge of the clearing. Standing there was a large man dressed in animal skins. On top of his head rested a helmet made from the skull and antlers of a deer. He was very far in the distance, all the way out to the tree line, but I was sure that was what I was seeing.
Yelling out to my husband, I ran down the stairs with my pistol in my hand. Dashing out the door, I quickly made my way to the end of the porch. From there I should be able to spot the man again. My husband and the three movers ran outside with me, but when we got out to the porch there was nothing to see. The man yet again vanished without a trace.
Everyone was on edge as we all returned to our work. The movers saw the helmeted man standing in the road; he was in fact the reason for their accident. When I described what I could see, I literally saw shivers course down the spine of the driver. It was clear that my description of the strange man fell in line with what the movers saw. My husband looked like he saw a ghost as well. What I described was what he saw standing on our front lawn that first night we slept in this worn-out house.
This creepy figure was enough to encourage the movers to pick up the pace and get everything unloaded quickly. I did not really want them to leave when they were finished, but it was not like we had anywhere here for them to sleep. It was late afternoon when the three men climbed back into their empty truck and headed back towards town. The men acted as though they were trying to beat dusk, but I knew they were really eager to get away from our house and that spooky man who was apparently stalking our forest.
I was so glad to have a refrigerator running in the house finally. I was tired of eating from waterlogged containers floating in a cooler of melting ice. Someone should be out here from the gas company in two days to check all the lines and connections, and we had someone else who was supposed to come get our well running again.
If we did not get running water soon, I was going to have my husband drive me into town. I would rent a room at the motel if that was what I had to do to get a hot shower. We were here for three days already, and I had not showered since we left our former apartment. How people survived before running water is something I will never understand. I almost felt like going to take a bath in the pond that rested about a hundred yards from the house. We cleaned off the same way we did the last few nights, by wiping down thoroughly with a wet towel. Hopefully that would be the last night we had to do the sponge bath.
I felt a lot more comfortable sleeping in our own bed with nice thick curtains covering the window. Until we got heat and water, we used some older sheets rather than our newer softer ones because we did not want to get them filthy. Even though the sheets we used were older and rougher, it still felt a world better than being zipped into a sleeping bag.
My husband and I both were having difficulty getting to sleep, as neither of us could shake the urge to look out the window to see if that elk or if that barbaric man was standing out there. My husband, who normally fell asleep within minutes of hitting the bed, even stayed awake for nearly an hour before I began to hear him snore lightly. I was awake for at least half an hour longer than him.
We were awoken again by the sound of a loud bang. Unlike the noise we heard the previous night, this sound came from the roof. My husband and I were on our feet and armed in only seconds. I was clutching my revolver, but my husband grabbed his shotgun. He waved his hand abruptly in the air indicating to me that he wanted me to get lower to the floor. Once I was squatting on my feet, he knelt down to one knee and kept his shotgun pointed at the roof.
Trembling, I leaned my back against the side of the bed to help steady myself. We both expected to hear another loud bang on the roof, but we heard something else instead. Whatever landed on our roof began to walk around. It sounded as if it had a stride similar to that of a person, but we did not hear feet. We heard hooves. Something with hooves got onto our roof, and it was not difficult to notice there were only two steps, not four. Whatever was up there walked upright.
How it was walking on our slanted roof with hooved feet was something I could not say, but it terrified me beyond belief. There was a thud as the thing took a pause in its steps. When it again started walking, we could hear something scraping against the roof. In my head I saw the sickle-like weapon my husband saw that man in the horned helmet carrying scraping against the worn-out shingles of the roof.
My husband gently took me by the arm and helped me to the wall furthest from the window. I wanted to cry, but I kept myself composed. I could not aim my weapon properly through tear-filled eyes. Looking over to my husband, I could see he had his eyes focused intently on the curtain covering the windows. If the thing could get onto the roof, it could certainly get to the ledge right outside this room.
The thing continued to walk around on the roof for fifteen minutes or so and then stopped. As soon as we began to think it might be safe, the hard clunky hoof-steps resumed. Whatever was up there on our roof, I had no doubt it was playing with us, taunting us. This thing seemed to take joy in terrorizing my husband and me.
I could not help but wonder if this was one being, one creature doing this, or if there were many of them. I did not think there was really much of a possibility that this was one shape shifting entity stalking us, but I would not think anything with hooves would be able to walk on a roof with a pitch as steep as ours.
We endured this terror for perhaps thirty minutes or more before the hoof sounds finally came to a stop. My husband and I stayed where we were for at least another ten minutes as we waited for the hoof-steps to resume, but the silence continued. My husband was about to get up and check outside the curtain when we heard a loud thud on the other side of the window. I aimed my pistol at the heavy curtain, and my husband stood there with his shotgun planted firmly in his shoulder.
A few more minutes passed, and we began to hear the sound of metal tapping lightly on the glass. It did not sound like it was trying to break the glass or even testing its strength. I truly believed the unholy thing outside was deliberately trying to stike fear within us, as if it gained some sort of sick pleasure from tormenting others. Whatever the thing was, and whatever reasons it had for doing what it was doing, I was certain now that being was not human. There was no way a normal person could walk around on the steeply pitched roof as this thing did.
Suddenly there was a loud thud on the window, as if someone slapped it with their hand. That was the final straw for both of us, and my husband and I unloaded our weapons into the curtain. Something inhuman shrieked seemingly more from surprise than from pain. I dropped my pistol and picked up my husband’s as he reloaded his shotgun.
To my horror, my husband ran over to the window and pulled the curtain aside. All he saw was a large elk running in the distance, illuminated by the light of the full moon. I begged him to come away from the now shattered window. I begged him to come out of this vulnerable room to get to a safer room, but he was sure the thing was now gone. I told him it was gone at the time, but it could return, and would probably return with others.
After thinking about it for a minute, he agreed and we started gathering what we needed. I reloaded my pistol and handed my husband’s back to him. I threw my rifle over my shoulder and grabbed my shotgun. With our hands full and me carrying just about all the weight I could, we grabbed our sleeping bags and pillows. We could not carry any more than that. My husband unlocked the door, and we quickly made our way to the master bedroom.
It was rather pointless for us to bring our sleeping bags, as neither one of us could sleep after the ordeal we endured. We were so terrified something was going to now come into the house through the shattered window, it was impossible for either of us to get any rest. We continued to watch the locked door, waiting for something inhuman to force its way into the room in which we had ourselves barricaded.
Neither of us could talk. We could not think of anything to talk about except that thing or things that were terrorizing us so deeply. Both of us sat in absolute silence for the next several hours as we awaited the next sunrise. It was not until the sun began to peek over the distant horizon that we finally said anything.
We both agreed that whatever this thing was, whether or not it be animal or man, it was never going to leave us alone. That was probably the reason the previous residents abandoned the house with so many of their belongings still inside. The thing did not attack us directly, at least not yet, but it was probably only a matter of time before its actions became more violent. As much as we loved the house and the land, it was not something worth dying over.
Gathering what few things we could, my husband and I decided we had enough. Whatever this thing was, it was capable of feats far beyond the capabilities of any human. I was sure we would be unable to kill the beast. When we unloaded our firearms at the window, there was no way we could miss the creature. Even still, we did not appear to cause it any harm.
When we stepped out the front door, we could see that massive elk in the distance standing at the edge of the tree line. My heart raced and my stomach sank as I looked at the unnatural animal. I began to grow dizzy, and my husband had to assist me the rest of the way to our truck. As we climbed into the cab of our vehicle, more animals began to emerge from the dark forest and moved to join the elk in watching our exodus.
Within three minutes we were heading down the hill where the ground rose up on one side obscuring our view of the strange animals. Once we were to the bottom of the hill, we could see the tree line once again. Instead of seeing a motley group of animals standing there, we saw approximately a dozen people. All of them were dressed in animal skins and wore helmets made from the heads of animals. Terrified beyond measure, my husband drove us along the long driveway so fast I thought he was going to run us off the road a few times.
Never again did we return to that house. We tried to get the movers who brought our things out there to go and pick them back up, but the drivers refused to return to that place. Only having owned the land for slightly over a week, we put it back up for sale. Never again did we return to what was supposed to be our dream home.
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