Shadow Creatures and the Tuurnagait in the Woods...(Part One)

"As a 77 year old man, I have lived an extraordinary life and have seen many things, but none of things that ever happened to me was as terrifying or horrific as when I spent my first summer as a 14 year old boy in the pacific northwest on a camping trip. The memory of that time still terrorizes me to this day when I think of it. I want to share my story with all of you...

It was 1946, just one year after WW 2. My father moved the family (my mother, younger sister and me) from Chicago to Washington State.

My father was offered and accepted a job in the logging industry, and after the war, we all packed up everything we owned and headed out on the road together. As I recall, it took us about a week.

I was excited and nervous about the move we were making.

Little did I know at that time, just how nervous I should have been...

My father had bought an old three bedroom timber framed house for us off of an old dirt road about a half mile to our nearest neighbor. We were surrounded by the tall pine and fir trees that are common to the area.

 I never initially put much thought into it, but I had begun to notice as the weeks passed, strange figures looming around the house at night. They appeared to be in the form of shadow people, which I would watch from my bedroom window after the lantern went out.

At first, I was not very afraid of them, just more curious. This would turn out to be a mistake.

The shadowy figures did not move as the rest of the shadows did under the moonlight...they moved differently and with a purpose.

They always appeared regardless of if it was windy or not. I cannot explain exactly how I knew they were different, but they definitely were. They resembled people and walked through the forest in steps around the house.

One day, I was looking for evidence of their trespass. I never found any footprints, but I would occasionally find stones that were stacked up into small piles around my window.

At first, I discounted them, thinking it was my sister. I confronted her and she denied it. She has always been very honest and sincere and I believed her when she said she didn’t do it. Her and I had a special bond, she looked up to me and would never lie to me.

At nine years old, I know also that she would not have been able to move a few of the larger rocks into place.

My Father was always working and never really at home, when he was, he liked to read his paper and listen to his radio programs. My mother would not indulge herself in such trivialities as going into the woods and making piles of rocks, she was too busy keeping house.

I would walk down to the mailbox to collect our mail, about a half mile away, often. I would get the worst feeling that I was being followed and watched.

The further away from the house I got, the more intense the feeling.

Sometimes I would run as fast as I could down that dirt road to get the mail and get back as fast as I could. It was about a 20 minute walk to the mailbox and a 20 minute walk back. I had managed to cut my time down to 25 minutes there and back and became a good runner because of it.

Even though I could never actually see them during the day, I knew they were following me when I would wander too far away. I always felt that I could be taken at any time.

 I would regularly take down the piles of rocks, and within a few nights, they would re-appear, often in different places. And as I said, there never was a sign of human activity. I did not know what to do about the strange rock formations and the shadow people I saw. Every time I would ask about it, I was told to stop being stupid.

One night, they came really close to my window, I remember because it was a hot summer night and the frogs were unusually loud that evening. It was about 9 or 10 o’ clock at night, the sun had set not long before; we were tucked into bed… (My bed time was 8 o’ clock). I heard a terrible thump on the wall facing the outside near my window.

I jumped out of bed, ran over to the window and saw it. It was a black shadowy thing with a head and arms and a torso with no legs that whipped its head around and looked up at me. I swear to this, that thing was real and it was there.

I was so terrified I froze for a moment.

Then I ran to the closet in the den and grabbed dads Remington rifle, loaded it as fast I could and got to the door. I was so scared to open it that my fingers were shaking. But I closed my eyes and managed to do it.

I turned the latch and the wooden door creaked open to the night.

I took a very cautious and nervous step out onto the porch and turned right, where my bedroom window was, to look at the thing.

 IT WAS STILL THERE!

I did not know what to do, or what it was, I was never so frightened in all my life. I raised the rifle and fired off a round into it.

I quickly reloaded the bolt action rifle and got off another two shots before the rest of the shells from my pajama front pocket spilled out onto the wooden deck. The thing did not react to the bullets being fired through it, instead it just menaced at me floating there by my bedroom window.

It was not long before my dad came running out to the porch, the thing had whipped away so fast in less than a second that by the time my dad was there, it was gone.

He took the rifle from me, picked up a few shells reloaded it and pushed me behind him. He stood between me and the dark woods where this thing had come from and asked if it was a wolf.

I bit my lip and, lied. Yes, it was a wolf.  "Did you get it?" he asked. "I’m sorry, I don’t think so" I said, feeling bad for telling a fib to my father.

A few weeks passed. I had begun having night terrors and would have a recurring dream that a giant witch lady was coming to pick me up and scoop me into a basket and take me away. She cooked people on rocks and ate them.

I understand how ridiculous this sounds, but it was a chilling and grisly dream that I had often.

She was a witch who lived in the woods and would use the souls of her former victims to gather up more children. As a 14 year old in those days, I was considered a young man and not really a kid as such, but someone had forgot to tell the witch that.

I got to a point in my life that I needed to know what was happening. I certainly couldn’t talk to anyone about it, especially in those days. So I started investigating.

What I found in the public records and newspaper archives scared the hell out of me even more"...

Continued in part two...link below:
http://queeniescrib.blogspot.com/2011/02/shadow-creatures-and-tuurnagait-in_14.html