Okay, so here’s my story. I was 16 at the time and was visiting my family in Alabama. They were farmers who owned a huge amount of land down in Huntsville. My uncle owned this big house, and he had a bunch of trailers they would use all the time for hunting or camping. My cousins came to me and said that we should take a trip down there and camp for a few days. But they knew I was this city kid from Chicago and so they took great pleasure in teasing me all the time.

Anyways, we collected some food, killed a pig and some chickens, and pretty much just brought whatever else we needed for the trip. When we got to the camp it was obvious that there was something weird about it. The air…it had this weird electric smell...kind of like what you smell right before a storm, like ozone. But we thought nothing of it at the time, and we began unpacking. After we were done, we decided to go down to the little creek out there and swim for a few hours.

We weren’t there very long, when all of a sudden, this old white guy and his teenage son came out of the bushes. He had a shotgun in the crook of his arm. He says hello and asks us what we were doing this far back in the woods. I told him about my uncle, and the old guy seemed to know who he was, and we said that we were just camping out. The old man told us that we needed to be “real” careful out there, and that we needed to stick together. He said something about there being some kind of big animal in the woods. Then his son, who was around my age at the time, asked his old man if he could stay and hang out with us, and he said it was okay.

So, we ended up playing football and pretty much just screwed around all day. At that point, there were quite a few of us. There was the white kid who we had just met named “Tanner”, five of my cousins, and then four of their friends. In total, there were five girls and six boys. We were all around the ages of like 15 to 17 at the time.

We all ended up heading back to the camp, and we pulled out some stuff for a campfire, even though the trailers both had kitchenettes. Tanner said that his family’s property was right next door to my uncle’s. He wanted to run home and ask his dad if he could camp with us. Then my cousin, Rooster, said that he would go with him since that it was going to get dark soon. One of the girls in the group wanted to tag along too, so she went with them.

It was about 7 o’clock in the evening and it was starting to get pretty dark, so they took some flashlights and started down the trail that led towards Tanner’s property. So, the rest of us stayed behind at the campsite. We pretty much just chilled; made smores, drank, and kissed on the girls.

And about thirty or forty minutes later, there was that smell of ozone again. It was so strong that it completely obstructed the smell of the fire that we had started. I mean this smell was really nasty; it was just this coppery smell of like right after you’ve had a nosebleed and it’s stopped. It wasn’t exactly like dried blood, but it was that nasty metallic, back-of-your-throat smell.

We immediately thought that it was some kind of electrical malfunction, or that maybe someone left a hotplate on or something like that. We started searching the trailers and nothing was on, but the scent was still there, and we could all smell it.

Suddenly, we heard someone just booking it down the path that led towards us. And I see Rooster, Tanner, and the girl come running into the clearing, and they’re all out of breath. They don’t even break stride; they just run into the trailer, right by where the fire was.

The three of them are completely hysterical and we can’t hear a word of what they’re saying. They eventually ended up calming down, and I saw that even Rooster was crying his eyes out at this point. All the while, the fire outside was getting lower and lower, and my other cousins, they wanted to go outside and get the generator from the shed that was between the trailers. But then Tanner becomes very defiant and bursts out, shouting,

“No! Absolutely not! Lock the front door; ain’t nobody else going back outside!” I could tell that he had been crying too. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and his pants were completely coated with dirt.

Tanner went on and told us that when he got up to his house, his father said it was fine and everything for him to go camping but that he needed to be careful on the way back. He even offered to give him one of the hunting rifles just in case.

Evidently, Tanner had seen something in their yard a few days before. They found one of their pigs ripped up and half eaten. They assumed it was just some big cat or coyote. Anyway, he said that he had went and packed his stuff and told his dad that they would be OK without the rifle. So, they started walking back towards the camp.

And at this point, I noticed that Rooster had finally stopped crying, and the girl, well...she was just staring out the window with this dumb look on her face. Tanner went on and said that they had just gotten halfway into the woods when they started to hear something coming from behind the trees. It was almost pitch black by this time, so they weren’t sure at first what it was. The girl said that she heard something in the bushes from right off the trail. They shined their flashlights over to where she heard the noise, and they saw someone standing a ways back in the woods. Rooster said that they shouted at him and told him to go away and that he was freaking them out.

That’s when Tanner says he realized that the guy was actually facing away from them. They decided to keep on walking, and it was then that they started smelling that nasty coppery ozone smell. They looked off into the forest on their opposite side and saw that guy just standing there in the woods, with his back towards them, but this time he was slightly closer to the path. So that’s when they started powerwalking down the trail and Tanner just kept saying over and over,

“I should’ve taken that rifle. I should’ve taken that rifle.” But then while Tanner was telling his story, we all noticed that the smell of coppery ozone was now super strong, and it was even inside the cabin.

Despite how freaked out we were, Tanner went on and said that they started walking even faster, but then they heard something. They said that they heard a low gibbering coming from both sides of the wood. That’s when they started booking it back to the trailer. The girl says that she shined her flashlight back into the forest and saw something jerking itself about through the woods. The gibbering just got louder and louder, and when they saw the light from our campfire, something had come out of the woods, about 40 yards behind them onto the trail, which gave those three enough of a fright to finish sprinting into the camper.

So, you know, at this point we’re all together in the trailer and we’ve had a chance to calm down, and we started assuming that it was just some rednecks or whatever trying to mess with us. But then my other cousin, Junior, started going on about how he went to school with this native kid that told him stories about the “Goatman.” And we pretty much just told him to shut up and that we really didn’t need to hear any spooky talk right now.

But he just keeps going on and on about how “it’s the Goatman,” and how we were in his woods and blah, blah, blah. Now at the time, I had never heard of a goat man or whatever, but then a couple of years ago, back when I was in college, I knew a Menom, a Native American, and he was my roommate. And I asked him about this supposed “Goatman.” And to sum it up, it’s basically this man who has the head of a goat, and that he can apparently shape-shift and he gets among groups of people to terrorize them. It’s also supposed to be kind of like the Wendigo, and it’s supposedly “bad mojo” to even talk about it and even worse if you actually see it. Keep in mind, I didn’t know this back when all of this was happening. And my cousin just keeps rambling on and on,

“The Goatman’s going to get in and get us.” The girls are all terrified and my cousins and I are just trying to figure out if it’s just some hillbillies messing with us or if it’s some animal or whatever.

But then suddenly, and I mean very suddenly, the smell of ozone just goes away. To this day, I have never experienced anything like that. Usually smells fade away or lessen over time, but that smell was literally there one second and then it was just gone the next.

So, we were sitting in the trailer for about an hour, and it was around 9 or 10 o’clock. We had all pretty much calmed down by this time, and we had managed to gather enough courage to go outside to try and stoke the fire again. We all figured that it was just some guys out there trying to scare us, and we decided not to go back home, because if we did, we assumed that those same idiots would try and chase us through the woods or whatever.

Surprisingly, nothing else weird happened the rest of that night. So, we decided to just keep on camping. Another day went by, and we stayed for another night out there. And for the most part that other night went by without an incident. But at about 1 o’clock in the morning, we were all outside by the fire drinking and telling ghost stories, when the smell came back. This time it was so strong that one of the girls literally started vomiting right then and there.

I stood up, and you could actually feel how clammy the air was. I tell them all that we should get inside the trailer and that something isn’t right. Something was wrong. That night…we should’ve just left.

We all went back inside the trailer and at this point we were just trying to keep our cool. Then my cousin, Junior, starts up again and goes on and on about how it was the Goatman, coming to get us again. My other cousin, Rooster, tries to get him to shut up, and all the while I’m just feeling like that there’s something seriously wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

We all just sat in there, petrified, with the smell just as strong as before. We became so paranoid that we literally huddled together in that camper. Eventually, we ended up calming down a bit and everyone was starting to get hungry, so we felt comfortable enough to fire up the stove, and we started cooking brats for everybody, because, of course, nobody wants to go back outside to the campfire. We used one of those packs with four brats per package, and we opened 3 of them just to get us started. I grilled them up on the stove, gave everybody a hot dog, and then got one for myself. After a while, one of my cousins gets up to go get another one out of the pot.

And then he starts grumbling about how I got two brats while everybody else only got one. He confronts me about this, and I look at him like he’s stupid. I told him that everybody only got one because there were only 12 brats to go around, and that if he wanted more, he should have opened up a new pack to cook some more. That’s when the girl who had been out with Tanner and Rooster the other night, suddenly started screaming,

“Oh no! Get out! Everybody get out!” She was crying and shivering. Then my cousin suddenly understands what’s wrong. We both glance around the room, and then I feel my heart sink. Me and my cousin are the first ones out of the camper, with the girl who was screaming following behind us. Then finally, everyone else just books it outside, with the trailer door banging against the side due to the rush of bodies. Then one of my cousin’s friends asks us what was wrong and why were we panicking. I started to count all of the people who were outside. There were only 11 of us now.

My cousin said that there had been 12 people in the camper. But you know, being that we all didn’t really know each other very well, nobody had really noticed that the whole time there was an extra person. And that’s when I remembered that I had noticed something earlier. I noticed that...something was off. You know how when you're in the moment and you’re having a good time, so you don’t sweat the small stuff? And you’re not really keeping track of these weird little mishaps? I was dead sure that someone else had been there in the trailer with us. Someone else who had been there among us for at least a day. Someone who...I didn’t really remember being there with us the previous night. What makes it worse is, that I actually knew which one it was among us, because I don’t really remember anyone else interacting with this other person.

The girl who had screamed then began praying to Jesus and we were all sitting outside now, not really knowing what to do with ourselves. Eventually, we get these big sticks from the woods and go back inside the trailer and lock the door. We explain the situation to anyone else who may have missed it, and the girl says that she had realized it too, when she was sitting inside the camper. She tells us that there was this person sitting next to her and that he had suddenly grabbed her viciously by the leg and had leaned over to whisper something in her ear that she couldn’t understand.

So, we were all pretty much just scared to death at this point, and for the rest of that night we all huddled together until we fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I think the sun was just coming up. Some of the people around me were still asleep, but I had noticed that a good majority of them had already gotten up to pack up their stuff.

We all just wanted to go back home, and that’s what we did. But there were like four others who wanted to stay until the sun was all the way up. And I don’t blame them. And there were still some people thinking that the previous night’s experience was still just some big, practical joke. And those people still insisted on staying at the trailers. Me on the other hand, I just wanted to get out of those woods.

I went up to the girl who the Goatman had touched (I believe her name was Keira) and I asked her if she really thought that there was something bad out there, and she just told me with this faraway look in her eyes, that she just wanted to go home.

And so, Keira left, along with anyone else wishing to go home and those who were left, stayed with the camper. If I had a choice, I most definitely would have left the campsite as well, but I had to stay, because I had the keys to the camper and it was my uncle’s, so I had to lock it up. And I was beginning to get really frustrated with the others at this point, because I felt as though some of them weren’t taking this seriously. And I most certainly did not want to stay out there for another night. I basically spent the rest of the day trying to convince those who were left, now 5 girls and 3 boys, that we all just needed to pack up and leave. Tanner was among those who left so that he could get the rifle, but he said that he would be back. By 4 o’clock that day, there were only 8 of us left out in the forest. All alone. By ourselves...

About an hour later, we were still waiting for Tanner to return, but he still hadn’t made it back yet. We were all on edge and were beginning to get really antsy.

30 minutes later, at around 5:30, one of my cousins who stayed with us suddenly cries out and says that Keira is outside the camper. We all look outside, and sure enough, there she was, standing by the firepit with her back facing towards us.

I remember thinking to myself, if she was so utterly terrified before, then why in the world would she come back? And that’s when I got this nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Now keep in mind, this whole time that coppery smell had been gone. But then at that moment, I realized that I could smell just a twinge of it.

I tell the rest of the group about this and ask if they can smell it too, but instead they just started laughing at me and asking if I set this up so that I could scare them. And these were the same idiots who wanted to stay in the woods after we had that “thing” in our midst!

I, of course, tell them that I wasn’t kidding around, and I try to explain to them that I would never play like that, especially after experiencing what we went through the other night. But then, to my surprise, one of the girls opens the door to the trailer and steps outside to get Keira. She gets about halfway to her and then she suddenly stops cold. Keira then just bent her head forward and started heaving, or something, I honestly don’t really know how to describe it. Sort of like if someone with their back turned away, just started laughing but without making a sound. Then I couldn’t help but notice that the entire forest was dead silent.

The thing is the woods are never really “silent;” There’s always something to hear. Whether it’s a cricket chirping, or a squirrel chit chattering, or something so simple as the old pine trees creaking and moaning. But this was the first time, that I ever heard pure silence.

So, I take a step out the door and I pretty much order her to get back inside the trailer. The girl continued to stare at Keira for a moment or so, before backing up slowly inside. I then slammed it closed and made sure to lock it. We pulled down the shades for all of the windows inside the camper, except for the one that showed the firepit. One of the guys stations himself there to keep an eye on Keira.

20 minutes pass by, and she’s still standing there. The guy keeping a watch on her had just turned towards us to let us know that she was still there, when we hear a huge bang at the door.

This, of course, makes us all jump out of our seats. Then the banging continues, just as violently as the first one. We all gather together at one corner of the camper, far away from the door, and the banging just keeps getting louder and louder.

My cousin was holding one of the girls, trying to keep her calm, and the other three are just giggling with nervous laughter. Meanwhile, me and the other guy are too petrified to do anything. And then we hear that it’s Tanner, and he’s screaming,

“Hey! Come on! Open the door! It’s me, Tanner! Stop playing around!” So, we go to open the door, and Tanner comes stumbling in with the rifle in his hands. He sits down and takes a moment or two to catch his breath before speaking.

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Tanner told us that he had made it down the trail without any problems, but that when he had walked up to the campsite, just by the edge of the clearing, he saw this girl. The thing was, he said that the girl he saw was not Keira. At first, he said that she had had her back towards him, but then she turned around and stared at him with a slack jawed expression. Her eyes slowly following him as he moved closer to the trailer, almost as if she was tracking him. It wasn’t until he was about halfway there that he then realized that the girl was getting closer to him. He never saw her move, but she was just slowly, menacingly, inching closer and closer.

Tanner said that he got so freaked out that he just quickly darted to the trailer door, hoping that whoever was inside would open it right away. Apparently, that girl was about 10 feet away from him when we had finally opened the door.

After Tanner finished his story, he then took a quick glance around the room, and then he suddenly grew very pale. He gets up from his seat and pulls me over to the side and whispers in my ear,

“How many of you were in here before I came back?” I told him that there were 8 of us in the camper before he returned. He then let out a sustained breath of disbelief and I asked him what the matter was. He pulls me closer and whispers,

“If that’s true, then why are there only 8 of us now?”

I then felt my stomach drop. I was beginning to understand what he was trying to tell me. If there were 8 of us, and then Tanner came back, that would make 9 in total. But there weren’t 9 people in the camper now. There was still only 8 of us, including Tanner. Which meant that someway, somehow, there was an extra person in our midst, and now that person was gone.

I walked over to the window that was facing the firepit, and I looked outside and saw that there was nobody out there. And I knew then…that the girl we were watching was not Keira. I sat there, watching the ominously still trees outside, feeling more vulnerable than I had ever felt possible, and a cold chill ran down my spine, as I stared into those dark woods, knowing what was lurking out there, lying in wait for us.

Anyway, Tanner had brought back a couple boxes of ammo along with his rifle. He told his dad that there was some kind of vicious animal in the forest. Of course, he wasn’t about to tell his father that some monstrous Goatman was terrorizing us. Tanner then told us that his own cousin was supposed to be coming over in a few hours, and that in the morning he would take us all back to his place and would drive us back home.

That news brought some relief to us all, and I felt much better about the situation now that we had Tanner’s rifle, because at least now, we could be proud Americans and just shoot that thing if it ever came back. But then one of the girls that was with us, begins causing trouble and starts this huge argument with my cousin, because she still believed that all this weird stuff was my doing and that I was somehow pranking everybody. My cousin keeps trying to talk some sense into her, but she just keeps getting more and more frantic by the second. She begins rambling on and on, and says,

“Well, how do we know if what we saw was really real? Maybe Tanner and your cousin planned this whole thing and was just trying to scare us! Well it’s not funny anymore! And it never was funny! Just please stop! I can’t take this anymore!” The girl then begins sobbing with her face buried into her hands. She continues and says, “And how do we know if this is the real Tanner standing here before us? How are we supposed to know that the Goatman didn’t just kill Tanner in the woods and take his gun? Or maybe it’s not Tanner, maybe it’s somebody else. Anybody in this room could be the Goatman in disguise and we wouldn’t even know it! What’s happening? We can’t even trust ourselves anymore!”

She then began to cry even more, while the rest of us tried to calm her back down. And this whole time, I’m just growing more and more terrified by the minute, because I realize how dangerously serious our situation has become. We actually had someone, or something, sneaking into the camper and mingling among us. And whatever it was, was out there...watching us probably.

The girl who was crying then kept saying that she wanted to go home right then and there, but we had to tell her that there was no way we were going to go trudging through the woods in the middle of the night. At that time, the sun was going down and it was beginning to become overcast.

So, we all tried to calm our nerves and grabbed a bite to eat, but none of us had any real appetite. We were just about done eating when there was a sudden knock on the trailer door. Tanner takes a peek outside and sees that it’s his cousin. But before Tanner could move forward to open the door, I grabbed him by the arm, and whispered,

“Are you sure that’s your cousin out there?”

“Trust me. I know it’s him.”

 He opened the door and then his cousin stepped inside. Tanner then briefly introduced us all to him; his name was Reese. He was an older boy, older than any of us at the time. I think he was 19 years old if I remember right. He had with him one of those heavy-duty lantern flashlights and in his other hand he held a second rifle.

Reese took one last glance back at the campsite outside, before we shut and locked the door behind him. He looked at all of us as if he was surveying everyone there, and then I see a puzzled look break across his face. There’s a moment of silence before he speaks, and says,

“Where’s your other little buddy at? I figured that she would meet up with me here at the camper. Is she a little slow or something?” Me and my cousin look at each other with fear in both of our gazes. Tanner is the only one brave enough to ask the same question that we were all thinking to ourselves,

“What girl?” he asks.

Reese then told us that when he was heading down the trail which led to the trailers, he ran into one of our “friends”, who was standing in the middle of the path, staring at him with a slack jawed expression. Apparently, he tried to engage in conversation with her, but she never responded. All she did was just stand there and look at him. Reese said that he thought nothing of it and guessed that she was just shy or whatever. He began walking again and as he passed by her, she just gave this little smile. As he continued walking ahead of her now, she seemed to be lagging behind. He had thought that she would at least follow him closely back to the camper with him, but she just stayed in the same spot as when he first saw her. She never moved. He called to her and asked if she was hurt and needed help or anything, but she just continued to stare uncomfortably at him.

Then Reese said that he just kept on moving for a little bit, focusing his gaze on the rest of the trail ahead of him, when he heard the girl whisper something that he couldn’t understand and when he turned around to face her, she was right up on him, staring intently into his eyes. He jolted back away from her in fear and said that he just stared at her for a long time, not really knowing what to say or do. Again, he asked her if she was okay, and if not, he offered to carry her the rest of the way to the camper. Again, she remained as silent as the grave. He then said that he reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, but he said that he must have “misjudged the distance” because she was suddenly off to the side away from him. As if she had moved with lightning-fast speed while he was looking right at her. Reese then said he gave up trying to make sense of her and told the girl that if she wanted to come, to follow him closely back to the camper. So, then he turned and just walked further down the trail leaving her behind.

Eventually, when he had turned a corner on the trail, he became concerned for the girl and went back to get her, but when he returned to the spot where she had been, there was no one there. The trail was empty. He told us that he had just assumed that the girl had taken some kind of shortcut that led back to our trailer or something.

After he was finished, we told him all about our strange, horrific experiences, and I half expected him to just write it all off as us just being paranoid, or drunk, or whatever. But he just sat there on the couch in our camper and listened to us explain our situation, surprisingly without a hint of skepticism in his gaze.

After a while, Tanner and Reese then started loading up their rifles, just to be safe, and we all just kind of sat around and tried to take our minds off the situation. But then at around 11 o'clock, something happened. To this day, I just wish that everything we went through really was just some ingenious prank, and that none of it was real, because I still have trouble sleeping at night, because of this one moment.

At around 11, that stink of coppery ozone, which had been lingering in the air this entire time, turned into this nasty gross blood-like smell, like as if someone was cooking blood and singed hair. Tanner and Reese noticed the change in scent as well; they jumped up immediately and grabbed their rifles.

And then I heard it...it was some sort of half-knocking, half-clawing at the door of the trailer. And then there was this voice...a horrifying voice coming from outside. That voice still haunts me to this day. At first it started out low, and then I could hear it say in a halting, weirdly toned voice,

“Let me in. Let me in! Let me in!!!”

Then it started banging itself against the trailer door, Tanner and Reese are the only ones brave enough to stand near the door with their rifles in hand. We all just started moving about with nervous energy. One of the girls then starts crying and begins calling on Jesus. I found myself nervously searching the camper for some kind of weapon that I could use to protect myself, in case that monster busted the door down. I pulled out a butcher’s knife from one of the kitchen drawers and held onto it as if it was my only chance at survival. I don’t really know why I did that, we obviously had Tanner and Reese there with their guns to protect us. I guess that’s what happens when you feel like your life is at stake. You do some crazy things. The beast outside continues to knock and bang against the door as it keeps on saying,

“Let me in! Let me in!!” This voice that I heard that night, was so bone chilling because it was obviously not a person talking. It did not have any cadence to it, and that’s something that I never realized until that moment, that all people have a certain cadence when they speak, no matter what language. And that voice which tortured us all in the camper that night, it did not belong to any human being, that I can promise you.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of that “thing” banging and screaming outside our door, we hear it walk away from the trailer. And that smell of rotten blood and singed hair goes away for a while. Then for the next hour or so, we could hear something out in the woods creeping about. At first just little things such as, trees creaking, and bushes rustling. But then, sometimes it sounded as if the entire forest was being torn apart by that beast's rage at our defiance of keeping him out.

There were a couple of times when it came back to stand outside our door and just wait there. If you got close enough to the door you could actually hear it breathing heavily on the other side. Like I said, this went on and on for about an hour or so, until finally, the smell faded away. It was around 2 o’clock in the morning by then, and we all just sat there in the camper for about 10 minutes when we hear something rummaging about in the woods again.

Then suddenly, Reese stood up and picked up his rifle. He looked at all of us for a brief moment, and then turned to face the door and said,

“I’ll be right back.” Tanner makes a move to stop him, but one of the girls holds him back. Reese unlocked the door and violently kicked it open. We watched him as he stumbled out onto the empty campsite outside, with both of his hands clutching his weapon. I think some of us in the camper were even tempted to shut the door in case the Goatman came, but we didn’t for Reese’s sake. Then, Reese points his rifle towards the sky and fires a shot. We all jump at the sudden blast. Afterward he said something to the effect of,

“In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of here!” Again, he raises his rifle to the sky and fires two more times. Then we all heard this low jibbering and hooting coming from a ways off in the woods. It sounded as if it was coming from across the small river that was roughly a quarter of a mile away from our campsite. It was a chilling sound that filled everyone in the trailer with utter terror.

Suddenly, one of the girls in the camper jumps up and shuts the door. I could see through the window that Reese didn’t even notice the door shut; he just kept staring out into the darkness towards the place where the noises were coming from. Tanner becomes infuriated and orders her to open the door. She verbally attacks him and says something like,

“Do you want to get us all killed?! That monster is out there!” I could see Tanner getting more and more angry by the second. He looks the girl dead in the eyes and says,

“That’s my cousin out there! He’s not safe! Open the door!” Tanner attempts to pull the girl by the arm away from the door, when she slaps him hard across the face. Then suddenly, they’re both on each other. Punching, kicking, and even scratching.

I awoke from my trance of watching the chaos unfold in front of me, and I moved forward to grab Tanner. It took a few tries, but I finally managed to pull him away from the girl. My cousin and another girl grabbed ahold of the one attacking him and pulled her away. At that point, I was struggling to keep Tanner under control and he just kept shouting,

“Let me go! Let me go!”

But then suddenly we all hear something outside that gets our attention. We hear someone screaming. At first, I thought it was Reese being attacked, and I rushed to the window to look for him. But it wasn’t Reese who was screaming; he was still standing outside in that same spot, with the gun in his arms. No, the screaming was coming from somewhere else. And then I realized that it was coming from deep within the woods. The screaming is horrific, and it sounded as if there was a woman and cat both screeching together at the same time. And then I start to hear the scream getting louder. That thing was coming closer. My stomach dropped once more, and I felt pale.

I look out the window and I see Reese suddenly look over in a different direction. He had turned his attention towards the tree line, and there were some bushes rustling about. He raises his rifle and fires a shot in the direction of the movements. Then I saw him slowly beginning to back up towards the camper.

Then Tanner jumped up and went to open the door. He yells at his cousin to get back inside, and he does so. We make sure to lock the door tight and Reese sits down on the couch, nearly out of breath due to his terror, I’m sure. He then tells us that he heard something come out of the bushes roughly 30 feet away from him. He said that he saw the creature with his own eyes. He claimed that it kept low to the ground and was crawling very slowly towards him, and that’s when he says that he shot at it.

“Did you kill it?” I hear one of the girls ask from behind me. His response was quiet, barely above that of a whisper, but we still heard him clearly even while he was breathing deeply in order to calm his nerves.

“No, I don’t think so. Just scared it off I think...”

But it didn’t stay away for very long, because it came back. Of course, it came back. It never really left. That’s how the rest of the night went by. It began screaming constantly again for another two hours and I felt as if I was going insane. And off and on, it kept on moving about through the bushes near the tree line. But it never did come back up to the camper. That is, until we all went to sleep. I still don’t know how it happened, I thought I would never sleep again after what we went through, but on that very same night, I found myself dozing off. I guess it was because I was exhausted. We were all exhausted.

It wasn’t until the screaming and the other noises had died away, that we were finally able to doze off. I don’t know what happened for the rest of that night, because I had fallen asleep soon afterward. But I talked to Tanner about it two days after all of this had happened, and he said that he had stayed up, keeping watch at the door with the rifle at his side. Nobody else was awake to witness all of this, so I guess I just had to take him at his word.

He claimed that he was still struggling to keep watch, when he felt like he was going to pass out from exhaustion. This was apparently long after those horrific noises from outside had ceased. He was just about to doze off, when he had suddenly heard the bathroom door open. He said that he saw a person leaving from there, and that they went and laid down in the middle of the floor to go back to sleep. He assumed that it was just one of us and then tried to nod off himself.

However, Tanner said that he felt like something was wrong, and so he only pretended to be asleep. He counted everyone that was in the camper and found out that there were now 10 people in there. He said that at that moment he began to develop cold sweats. He told me that he didn’t want to try and shoot at the thing while it was in there with them, because it probably would’ve gotten everyone killed. So, he just decided to stay awake for the entire night, pretending to be asleep.

He said that sometimes, it would stand up and tower over our sleeping bodies, and that every once in a while, it would do this weird jittery movement, or it would just heave like it was laughing or something. But then it would lay back down. Is it any wonder, that to this day, I still have trouble sleeping?

The next morning, I remember that when I woke up, I noticed that Tanner looked a little jittery and he had these large bags under his eyes. There was a bruise developing on his left cheek and some bloody scratches on his forehead that he must have gotten from the fight he had with the girl last night. He looked like he was in a rough shape. He was clearly trying to avoid looking at all of us. If you tried to look him in the eyes, he would turn away.

So, after we grabbed a bite to eat, we all packed up our stuff and were ready to head out by the time the sun was just coming up. We were all pretty eager to leave those God-forsaken woods, but then Tanner came to me and said that he wanted to stay behind and lock up my uncle’s camper for me. I hesitated at first, but Tanner was so persistent that I finally gave in and handed him the keys. He told us all that he would catch up with us later and to go ahead without him. I didn’t really want to leave him behind, but the rest of the group didn’t care and just wanted to get out of there, so I left with them.

We were about halfway up the trail that led to Tanner’s place, when we heard someone jogging behind us. Pretty sure all of us nearly jumped out of our skins upon hearing that. But I was relieved that it was just Tanner, finally catching up to us. We allowed him to catch his breath, and then we continued walking. Tanner still seemed jittery, even more so than when I had first seen him that morning. His eyes were darting all over the place, looking at every inch of the forest, as if he was just making sure that we weren’t being followed. I tried to tell him to relax and that there was no need to worry anymore. The trip was over, and we had gotten through with our lives. Tanner and I were walking side by side, when he suddenly whispered something to me.

“The reason I wanted to stay behind was because I needed to check on something in the camper.” His voice was very low, and he hurried his words. “I would’ve checked earlier, but I didn’t want everyone else to panic,” he said. This conversation suddenly made me feel very uneasy. There was a part of me that desperately wanted to know what he was talking about, and yet there was another part of me that was too scared to ask. But I didn’t have to because he went on.

“Do you know how that Goatman or whatever kept getting into the camper?” This sudden question threw me off guard, and for the first time, Tanner finally looked me dead in the eyes when he asked it. “You know that little window that’s in the bathroom? Well, before I locked up the camper, I went in there to investigate. And when I walked into the restroom, that window was open.” I didn't know it then, but that’s how the creature was able to sneak in and get amongst us that night when we were all asleep. And I couldn’t believe that we had been so stupid as to not lock a screenless window.

So, that’s pretty much where the story ends, we all got back to Tanner’s place safely without any troubles, and then Reese drove us all back home. But before we left, as I was about to tell Tanner goodbye, I saw that he was shaking a little bit and his eyes seemed fixated on something in the distance. I tried to ask him what was wrong, when he broke away from his gaze and looked at me. He just tried to reassure me and say that it was “all over” and that everything would be fine now. But he still looked a little pale and I was worried about him. I ventured further and asked how he was doing but he just looked at me and said,

“Just get home safely...okay?”

After that, we shook hands and I turned to hop into the back-seat of his cousin’s truck. As I sat there in the back, I couldn’t help but take one last glance outside towards the woods. I kept wondering to myself why Tanner was still so freaked out, even after the rest of us had already calmed down, and then I saw it. As I stared out the back-seat window into the deep, dark forest beyond, I could see “him.”

The thing which had tortured us all relentlessly for the past three nights. Even though it was far away, and half-covered by the brush of the environment, I could still see that it was looking right at us. For the first time, I had made eye-contact with the beast that had left a permanent scar on my psyche. And from the way it looked, it had almost seemed pleased.

THE END