The Encounter in the Midlands Woods: A Mysterious and Terrifying Experience

“When I was 13 years old, my family and I lived on 300 acres of private property owned by my family located in an area near the Midlands in South Carolina. Surrounded by deep, dark woods and without a single neighbor for miles, it was sometimes incredibly lonely. One day, after school around 4 in the afternoon, I was playing in the woods near my house. I suddenly noticed that I didn’t hear any birds chirping or anything, for that matter. It got oddly quiet.

Then I felt it – that feeling you get when you know someone is staring at you, which makes you very uncomfortable. But this was far worse. I looked up and in a tree about 20 feet ahead of me and about 18 feet high, I saw a brownish-clay-colored, blood-red-eyed, pterodactyl-like man. It had bat-like winged arms and sat haunched on its back, spindly legs as if it could leap into the sky and take flight at any moment.

You could see its sharp claws gripping the branch it was perched on, and although I couldn’t be exact about its height, I knew it was several feet taller than my 5’7″ frame. In its glaring, tiny, beady eyes, you could see the intelligence. The way it looked at us made me feel that it would swoop down and take us away at any moment. Watching us like it was seconds away from deciding whether to hurt us or which one it wanted.

It stared at me and my sister with such hatred that I immediately gasped and started screaming. Hoping that, like birds, it would be scared away by the sudden loud noise, I started screaming for it to shoo and leave, but it didn’t move. It only continued to stare with its red, beady, bulbous eyes, hate beaming from them. I picked up a large rock and threw it, but it had no impact whatsoever. It didn’t move, only continued to stare at us.

My sister and I ran inside and got my father, who, upon seeing this thing, ordered us to stay inside and lock the door. He said not to come outside for anything. But when I saw my father grab his shotgun, I just had to see what was going to happen, so I ran to the back of the house, hopped out the window, and snuck up beside the porch just in time to see my dad fire a warning shot overhead with his shotgun. You could hear the remaining wildlife scatter and run away in the distance, but this thing never even flinched.

It only continued to stare, now at my father with the same intense hatred. You could feel it. Then he fired a shot in its direction, but the half-man, half-flying dinosaur remained unmoved and unnerved in the tree. I ran back inside and found my dad locking all the doors. The sun started to set, and my dad made us promise not to go back outside that day.

For as long as the fading light remained, my father stood at the kitchen window, gun in hand, staring. I remember never seeing my father looking so nervous, confused, and scared. He was a military veteran and college graduate. He had his flaws, of course, but in no way was he unreasonable. I asked my dad what it was, and without taking his gaze from the window or his gun, he said, “I don’t know. Don’t go back outside tonight.”-Chenell