DATE:     1979 - 2000

TIME:    Usually at night

LOCATION: Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Colbert County

TERRAIN:    Wooded

OBSERVED:    Our family has a farm in Colbert County, Alabama on the Tennessee River.   The north half adjoining the river is wooded with ridges and deep hollows going down to sloughs of deep water off of the river.  The southern half is pastures and cropland with thick hedgerows and wooded lanes interspersed.  I was living in the old homeplace in the south part of the farm.

In fall of 1979, we had been having problems with poachers and some cattle rustling, so I had been spending a lot of time out at night and on my off days watching the place.  Several times at night (and once at about 7:00 am) I had heard strange screams back in the woods near the river.  I was familiar with the sounds of owls screeching, dogs howling and baying, bobcats squalling, peacocks calling and lots of other animal sounds, but I had never heard anything like this.  The closest thing I had ever heard to this was howler monkeys from South America, but these screams were louder and had a higher pitched component to them, and they were more drawn out at times.

One night at about 11:00 pm, my dog (a very large and brave male doberman pinscher) and I were walking home from the fields in the far northwest corner of the farm.  It was clear and the moon was almost to the first quarter and I could see clearly so I didn't have a flashlight with me.  We were skirting the edge of the woods about 3/8 mile north of the house when suddenly I got the feeling that I was being watched or was in danger.  My skin was crawling with goose bumps and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  Right then I also heard my dog whining very quietly and I looked at him and he had his head down and was skulking along like he had been whipped.  He kept glancing back and to his left at the treeline.  I increased my pace and clicked off the safety on my rifle.  At that instant something screamed at us from just inside the treeline less than 35 yards away.  The scream was incredibly loud, it vibrated my chest and clothes. (Note added later to report by witness:  The scream had a low frequency component that I could feel as well as hear, that I hadn't heard before at longer ranges.  If you have ever been close to a wild turkey strutting and gobbling, you know what I am talking about.)

We broke and ran to our right out into the pasture for about 50 yds.  I was scared it might be chasing us, so I spun around and stopped with my rifle up.  Thank God it was still in the treeline about 65 yds away.  The dog never broke stride and hauled butt to the house.  I stood there in the pasture pointing my rifle at it and it paced back and forth and screamed at me six or eight more times.  I couldn't really see it but I could tell where it was by the footsteps in the dry leaves and I could see saplings and small trees swaying as it bumped into them or pulled on them.  The creature was very large and was walking on two feet for sure.  Then it got quiet, but I still felt it watching me.  I backed away across the pasture for about 150 yds and then broke into a jog towards the house, but spun around about every 50 yards to make sure it wasn't chasing me.  When I got to the house, I was shaking so bad that, for a couple of minutes, I couldn't even get the door unlocked.  Thank  God for the streetlight in the yard.

A few days later, I had come in late from a date and it was about 1:30am.  I was getting ready for bed and had all the lights off except for one in the bathroom. I walked in my room and my dog was standing there at the foot of my bed staring towards the front of the house, completely stiff with every muscle rippling, the hair standing up on his back and neck and he was growling very low and menacingly.  This was the only time I ever knew of this dog to growl.  Then I got a glimpse of a shadow moving across the front window towards the west side of the house.  My dog turned towards the west and started growling even louder and more seriously.  The moon was shining right on the west side of the house and I saw a huge, tall shadow that was sort of human shaped move across my bedroom window.  It had to have been around 10 ft tall to cast a shadow that high up on my window.

I was petrified with fear.  The shadow moved across the window of my spare bedroom.  My dog continued to turn and follow it.  When his growling started to quieten down a bit, I picked up a riot gun loaded with buckshot and turned off the bathroom light and looked out the window into the backyard but didn't see anything.  My yard was surrounded with a hog-wire fence topped with two strands of barbed wire and two locked steel gates that made a lot of noise if they were opened or climbed.  The creature had to have stepped or jumped over the fence to get in and out of my yard.

A few weeks later, I was deer hunting on the back of the farm in the woods near the river and found 3 deer that had been killed and were laying within 40 feet of each other. At first I thought they had been killed by poachers, but I soon realized that this was different.  They all had at least one broken leg. They all had their belly torn open behind the ribcage and the guts were laying on the ground beside them. Poachers always took the hindquarters and tenderloins, but these carcasses were completely intact. Unfortunately, I didn't know at the time to check to see if all the internal organs were there. There were no bullet or arrow holes in any of them.

One of the deer had been killed right where it lay. The ground was torn up and saplings and limbs broken and there were tufts of deer hair hung in the bark on 2 larger trees within a few feet of that deer. Some of the hair was over 10 feet off the ground hung in the tree bark. The deer's back legs were both broken and twisted. Even then I thought it looked like someone had caught that deer by the back legs and swung it around and killed it by beating it against the trees.

About 600 yards east of there, I found 2 more killed deer with broken legs and torn or cut open bellies and the guts laying beside them. They were laying about 15 to 20 feet from each other. There was no sign of struggle there.

We didn't have coyotes on the farm then, so all the carcasses were in good condition and fairly fresh. One was so fresh that I even debated on taking it home and butchering it for myself. A couple of them had been nibbled on by coons or possums.

The next fall (1980), at the end of October, my wife was getting the wash in off the clothesline at about 7:00pm and I was in the kitchen starting supper.  Suddenly I heard a scream outside, that sounded like before and it was close by.  I ran out the back door onto the patio and was nearly run over by my terrified wife running in.  I heard a growl and another scream and it was right outside the gate at my corral, tack room and stable.  The fence around the corral is 6 ft tall and I could see glimpses of something moving on the other side that was at least 4 ft taller than the fence.

I had put out some oats and sweetfeed earlier and the horses and cattle had been up there but they were now running wide open getting out of there.  When the creature got in the light from the streetlight in our yard, I could see its black hair glistening and it appeared to have highlights of silver or grey on it.  It was growling and making clicking and gutteral sounds between screams and it was getting more agitated.  It struck a large tree limb about 10 or 11 ft off the ground and I heard it crack.  I then ran back in the house and locked the doors and turned off the lights and I got my riot gun and we sat there terrified in the inside corner of the den.  It got quiet after a few minutes.

  I moved out of the area a couple of weeks later and didn't get to hunt the farm any more until this past fall (Nov. and Dec. 1999). My son, daughter, a couple of friends and I were coon hunting there one night and heard the same screams as 20 years before. The dogs were terrified and kept coming back to the truck and wouldn't hunt, and these are champion dogs. So, we packed up and got outta there.

I didn't get to go back out there until April of this year. I was walking through the woods and found fresh deer bones in the same area that I had found the 2 deer carcasses 20 years before. We have coyotes now, so the bones were scattered and well chewed, but I did notice that one of the femur bones I found was broken while the other was intact.
 

Activities of Witness:  1. Had been sitting in a hedgerow  watching a pasture and a field and got up and started walking home and went about a half mile before I was screamed at.    2. Had come in from a date about 15 or 20 minutes previously and was getting ready for bed when a creature came in my yard and walked around my house.
3.  Had come in from work about 45 minutes previously and fed dog and horses and was fixing supper and wife was taking wash off the clothesline when a creature came up to the corral and stable where the horses were fed.
 

Description of Creature:  Very large, walking on two feet, glistening black hair with high lights of silver or gray in it, stood at least 10 foot tall.

Other Notes: Have found trees and saplings bent over or broken and sticks and limbs stacked in tee-pee or pyramid formations in several locations.  We have fire breaks going back in the woods and there are two of them that have several times had a tree pushed down across them a day or two after we drive down it.  Spelunkers found the collar from a neighbor's missing coon hound in a cave near the river. Have found rocks in the woods that were stacked in a pile, and I have stacked rocks and come back later and they were scattered.
 

Other Other Notes:   There are a couple of places in this area that the old-timers say were haunted or had monsters living in them and they are named appropriately, even on topo maps.

OTHER OCCURRENCES: Yes, lots of occurrences have happened in the area up and down the river for several miles for decades.  I know several other people who have seen something