Terror is a very, very real thing. [True Story inside, click if you dare]

[gurgleflep]

I'm in Missouri, so I have no clue.

Missouri you say? I'm in the same state, may I ask for a general location of said camping spot? The story has caught my interest so if it's close... I may get a few friends together, if nothing more than to just scare the bajeebus outta them I'm a coward, but I love a good scare

[Silverbit]

I just looked up "mange deer" on google image search, and it sounds similar to what you described. The scent of blood may be due to it having gored something, as the other posters have said, and the "grin" may have been due to the effects of mange or similar skin diseases on the jaw. Probably not a Wendigo.

[Bulldog Psion]

Well, as a confirmed unbeliever when it comes to cryptozoology, hauntings, and weirdness of any and every kind, I find your story interesting. My thoughts are:

1. It was a regular deer. Darkness and fear make things look a lot bigger than they are, just like they distort distances.

2. Blood smell could easily be some environmental factor totally unrelated to the animal. For example, deer carcase in the undergrowth, rotting vegetation producing a blood-like odor, etc. Changes in blood smell intensity easily explained by imperceptible shifts in air flow due to nighttime cooling.

3. Smile could be trick of light, imagination giving you a hard time when not fully awake, or animal opening its mouth incidentally and causing a momentary glint of teeth.

4. Slimy texture could easily be wet fur from swimming. Catching starlight/moonlight/ambient light, it could easily look smooth, pale, and wet, more like skin than fur.

5. Genuinely creepy explanation involving no supernatural/cryptozoological elements: apparition was sinister person wearing spooky looking outfit with antlers, drenched in slaughterhouse blood. Motivations range from trying to scare the heck out of you with a prank (mission accomplished), to serious predatory stalking with creepy costume thrown in for added terror value, depending on whether they're just a jerk or a psychopath.

I'm putting my bets on a regular ol' deer, though, possibly having just taken a swim. Have you ever heard a raccoon fight at night? You'd think that a pack of alien carnivores was ripping each other to pieces out in the darkness, and it can unnerve you until you find out what it is. A lot of natural phenomena are quite spooky with conditions of darkness, sleep, and isolation from civilization.

However, if there was anything genuinely horrific around, someone would have stumbled on it by now. There are too many people with instant communications, cell phone cameras, GPS, and so on around for there to be anything too mysterious left on this old Earth.

Anyway, maybe you should nerve yourself up and go look for tracks in the daylight. If I was closer, I'd volunteer to come along.

[ShadowFireLance]

Missouri you say? I'm in the same state, may I ask for a general location of said camping spot? The story has caught my interest so if it's close... I may get a few friends together, if nothing more than to just scare the bajeebus outta them I'm a coward, but I love a good scare

Klondike Park, actually. If it's close, it's a great camping spot.

I just looked up "mange deer" on google image search, and it sounds similar to what you described. The scent of blood may be due to it having gored something, as the other posters have said, and the "grin" may have been due to the effects of mange or similar skin diseases on the jaw. Probably not a Wendigo.

It's not a Wendigo by any means, I'm thinking it's a Skinwalker.

Well, as a confirmed unbeliever when it comes to cryptozoology, hauntings, and weirdness of any and every kind, I find your story interesting. My thoughts are:

1. It was a regular deer. Darkness and fear make things look a lot bigger than they are, just like they distort distances.

2. Blood smell could easily be some environmental factor totally unrelated to the animal. For example, deer carcase in the undergrowth, rotting vegetation producing a blood-like odor, etc. Changes in blood smell intensity easily explained by imperceptible shifts in air flow due to nighttime cooling.

3. Smile could be trick of light, imagination giving you a hard time when not fully awake, or animal opening its mouth incidentally and causing a momentary glint of teeth.

4. Slimy texture could easily be wet fur from swimming. Catching starlight/moonlight/ambient light, it could easily look smooth, pale, and wet, more like skin than fur.

5. Genuinely creepy explanation involving no supernatural/cryptozoological elements: apparition was sinister person wearing spooky looking outfit with antlers, drenched in slaughterhouse blood. Motivations range from trying to scare the heck out of you with a prank (mission accomplished), to serious predatory stalking with creepy costume thrown in for added terror value, depending on whether they're just a jerk or a psychopath.

I'm putting my bets on a regular ol' deer, though, possibly having just taken a swim. Have you ever heard a raccoon fight at night? You'd think that a pack of alien carnivores was ripping each other to pieces out in the darkness, and it can unnerve you until you find out what it is. A lot of natural phenomena are quite spooky with conditions of darkness, sleep, and isolation from civilization.

However, if there was anything genuinely horrific around, someone would have stumbled on it by now. There are too many people with instant communications, cell phone cameras, GPS, and so on around for there to be anything too mysterious left on this old Earth.

Anyway, maybe you should nerve yourself up and go look for tracks in the daylight. If I was closer, I'd volunteer to come along.

This thing was only about one meter away, so I'm fairly sure that it rules it out. It's head was far too high for that, and the way it walked was in no way similar to a Deer.

The blood smell could be explained entirely, so I'll give you that.

That'd be true, if it didn't have a full grin, with corner up really, really high.

The Only lake was pretty much frozen.

Highly doubt, people can't make that little of noise, trust me, I've worked at it for a really long time.


Oh, people have. They just generally don't think much of it because people'd think their loonies.
Look up /k/'s Skinwalkers.

[Grinner]

Well, as a confirmed unbeliever when it comes to cryptozoology, hauntings, and weirdness of any and every kind, I find your story interesting. My thoughts are:

1. It was a regular deer. Darkness and fear make things look a lot bigger than they are, just like they distort distances.

2. Blood smell could easily be some environmental factor totally unrelated to the animal. For example, deer carcase in the undergrowth, rotting vegetation producing a blood-like odor, etc. Changes in blood smell intensity easily explained by imperceptible shifts in air flow due to nighttime cooling.

3. Smile could be trick of light, imagination giving you a hard time when not fully awake, or animal opening its mouth incidentally and causing a momentary glint of teeth.

4. Slimy texture could easily be wet fur from swimming. Catching starlight/moonlight/ambient light, it could easily look smooth, pale, and wet, more like skin than fur.

5. Genuinely creepy explanation involving no supernatural/cryptozoological elements: apparition was sinister person wearing spooky looking outfit with antlers, drenched in slaughterhouse blood. Motivations range from trying to scare the heck out of you with a prank (mission accomplished), to serious predatory stalking with creepy costume thrown in for added terror value, depending on whether they're just a jerk or a psychopath.

I'm putting my bets on a regular ol' deer, though, possibly having just taken a swim. Have you ever heard a raccoon fight at night? You'd think that a pack of alien carnivores was ripping each other to pieces out in the darkness, and it can unnerve you until you find out what it is. A lot of natural phenomena are quite spooky with conditions of darkness, sleep, and isolation from civilization.

This would rely upon the confluence of a number of disparate factors. Not impossible by any means, but this particular scenario seems unlikely. By Occam's Razor, I'm just gonna go with skinwalker (which means the psychopath theory is right on the money).

However, if there was anything genuinely horrific around, someone would have stumbled on it by now. There are too many people with instant communications, cell phone cameras, GPS, and so on around for there to be anything too mysterious left on this old Earth.

Hmmm....That's true, but we're not talking about Times Square here...In fact, I recall hearing a statistic that about 95% of the U.S. is undeveloped land. While communication and surveillance technologies are ubiquitous, they're concentrated around human populations.

Plus, I never seem to have my phone handy when I really need it.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Hmmm....That's true, but we're not talking about Times Square here...In fact, I recall hearing a statistic that about 95% of the U.S. is undeveloped land. While communication and surveillance technologies are ubiquitous, they're concentrated around human populations.

Aye. I remember scientists discovering a new species of a rather large lizard in caves or something. Now obviously that was a good while ago, but if I remember it then it happened within the last decade. Our oceans are even less explored than land, but that's not really applicable in this case. It's possible the world governments have a vested interest in keeping other sapient and/or supernatural things hidden from the public eye, since it would cause a huge uproar if one were to be discovered (I am not someone to believe every secondhand account, but I'm not one to dismiss them all as a series of coincidences).

[Creed]

Well, that **** is going into a D&D campaign. Sure hope none of my players look at this thread.

[gurgleflep]

Klondike Park, actually. If it's close, it's a great camping spot.

Close-ish. 2 hours and 39 minute drive from a park just down the road from me (Ha Ha Tonka) to there. I'll check with a couple friends and see if they'd be willing to camp here sometime soon, only telling them your experience after setting up if nothing happens, at least they got scared and I got a giggle out of it.

[Zrak]

I just looked up "mange deer" on google image search, and it sounds similar to what you described. The scent of blood may be due to it having gored something, as the other posters have said, and the "grin" may have been due to the effects of mange or similar skin diseases on the jaw. Probably not a Wendigo.

None of the pictures on the first page are even as bad as it gets, either. Elk with really bad mange can look like horned jackal pus demons. I'm sure deer can, too.

Have you ever heard a raccoon fight at night? You'd think that a pack of alien carnivores was ripping each other to pieces out in the darkness

Oh, man, yeah.

[ShadowFireLance]

Close-ish. 2 hours and 39 minute drive from a park just down the road from me (Ha Ha Tonka) to there. I'll check with a couple friends and see if they'd be willing to camp here sometime soon, only telling them your experience after setting up if nothing happens, at least they got scared and I got a giggle out of it.

Make sure to tell them that Skinwalkers are attracted to people speaking about it, they're attracted to it more than anything. It literally will draw any in the area towards you.

[AtlanteanTroll]

And you didn't shoot at it ... why?

[ShadowFireLance]

And you didn't shoot at it ... why?

Because of a story I read on /k/ of Green Beret training group encountering this thing, and one guy ended up with a small tree through his leg.
I was not in the mood to screw with something.

[Grinner]

Because of a story I read on /k/ of Green Beret training group encountering this thing, and one guy ended up with a small tree through his leg.
I was not in the mood to screw with something.

Before or after the fact?

[ShadowFireLance]

Before or after the fact?

Before. Good Tiamat, Before. There was no way I was shooting something I haven't seen before.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Bulldog Psion
Have you ever heard a raccoon fight at night? You'd think that a pack of alien carnivores was ripping each other to pieces out in the darkness, and it can unnerve you until you find out what it is.

Or a coyote that's a lot closer than you realized. When you're alone under the stars at 1 am, that sound hits something primal inside you, and it's nowhere near so deeply buried as you wanted to believe.

Also, marmots fighting under the cabin floor in the Colorado Rockies. At 3 am. Ahh, memories.

Originally Posted by Grinner
...I recall hearing a statistic that about 95% of the U.S. is undeveloped land.

I think you may have heard that backwards, or the source of the "statistic" wasn't that reliable. An overwhelming majority of the land in this country has been completely transformed from what it was before.

Originally Posted by ShadowFireLance
There was no way I was shooting something I haven't seen before.

This is probably a good policy all around.

That said, I might have missed it in your OP, but did you have a flashlight? That's the first thing I reach for, since eyeshine can tell you a lot about what's out there.

.

[ShadowFireLance]

This is probably a good policy all around.

That said, I might have missed it in your OP, but did you have a flashlight? That's the first thing I reach for, since eyeshine can tell you a lot about what's out there.

.

I was in no way shape or form alerting it, as I thought it didn't notice me.
If it had been something smaller, I would have hit it with a flashlight.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ShadowFireLance
I was in no way shape or form alerting it, as I thought it didn't notice me.

I can understand why you'd want to keep a low profile. However, if I were in a tent, and it was a meter away from me, my first thought would be, "Busted!"

Originally Posted by Grinner
...I recall hearing a statistic that about 95% of the U.S. is undeveloped land.

Following up on this, as one quick example, take a look at this page for a Landsat-7 mosaic of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Scroll down to "available formats" and try out the 1000 x 1299 or a larger image.

Notice the small green rectangle with a dark spot in the middle? That's the Dismal Swamp NWR with Lake Drummond at its heart. Everything pale and fragmented around it is either urban, suburban or rural landscape.

Five hundred years ago, everything would've been the same color as the small green rectangle. Whoever made the 95% remark, that's probably not someone you want to rely on.

.

[Grinner]

Before. Good Tiamat, Before. There was no way I was shooting something I haven't seen before.

So you read an account of an encounter with it or something like it before this incident?

Following up on this, as one quick example, take a look at this page for a Landsat-7 mosaic of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Scroll down to "available formats" and try out the 1000 x 1299 or a larger image.

Notice the small green rectangle with a dark spot in the middle? That's the Dismal Swamp NWR with Lake Drummond at its heart. Everything pale and fragmented around it is either urban, suburban or rural landscape.

Five hundred years ago, everything would've been the same color as the small green rectangle. Whoever made the 95% remark, that's probably not someone you want to rely on.

Doesn't Washington D.C. land right in the middle of that?

"Undeveloped" wasn't the exact term used, either. There something about "Rural". I think it included farmland?

Anyway, I'm not saying the vast majority of the U.S. is pristine wilderness. I'm just saying there's lots of room around here without too many eyes watching.

[gurgleflep]

Make sure to tell them that Skinwalkers are attracted to people speaking about it, they're attracted to it more than anything. It literally will draw any in the area towards you.

You know you're just making this more fun for me right? I already get pleasure from scaring people, and you're adding fuel to the fire I tip my hat to you.

[ShadowFireLance]

You know you're just making this more fun for me right? I already get pleasure from scaring people, and you're adding fuel to the fire I tip my hat to you.

I have a literal pile of Skinwalker stories for you to tell, PM me if interested.

[thubby]

sounds like a moose. yes there are moose in missouri. they're rare to the point that various organizations have pushed to reintroduce them.

they're tall, 6 feet at the shoulder isn't uncommon. they're also notorious for not fearing humans, being aggressively territorial, and weighing as much as small cars.

silver/grey mottled coats are natural coloration for some species.

[ShadowFireLance]

sounds like a moose. yes there are moose in missouri. they're rare to the point that various organizations have pushed to reintroduce them.

they're tall, 6 feet at the shoulder isn't uncommon. they're also notorious for not fearing humans, being aggressively territorial, and weighing as much as small cars.

silver/grey mottled coats are natural coloration for some species.

The only two things lacking, Is pointy antlers and the walking. I've never seen anything in the world walk like that before.

[Grinner]

sounds like a moose. yes there are moose in missouri. they're rare to the point that various organizations have pushed to reintroduce them.

they're tall, 6 feet at the shoulder isn't uncommon. they're also notorious for not fearing humans, being aggressively territorial, and weighing as much as small cars.

silver/grey mottled coats are natural coloration for some species.

This changes things...By the way, ShadowFireLance, did you ever say whether it was quadrupedal or bipedal?

[Togath]

But.. they do have pointy antlers?
The walking could be a combination of moonlight and the shadows of tree leaves/branches.

[Palanan]

I think you said this place is about a two-hour drive from where you live?

Opportunity lost, then. First thing I'd do is look for tracks. Something as large as you describe would've left a decent trail.

[gurgleflep]

I think you said this place is about a two-hour drive from where you live?

Opportunity lost, then. First thing I'd do is look for tracks. Something as large as you describe would've left a decent trail.

From where I live, actually. I don't believe Shadow ever specified how far it was from his place of residence.

[ShadowFireLance]

This changes things...By the way, ShadowFireLance, did you ever say whether it was quadrupedal or bipedal?

This thing was, without a doubt, Bipedal. I pride myself on my night vison, and I can 100% with Certianty state, This thing was bipedal.

I think you said this place is about a two-hour drive from where you live?

Opportunity lost, then. First thing I'd do is look for tracks. Something as large as you describe would've left a decent trail.

It should Have. For the love of Tiamat, it should have.

But, I live about an hour away from it. I'm never going there again.

[Zrak]

You should've gone for a picture once you were in the car. I can see not doing it while you're outside with it, but once your in the car, get one out the window before you speed off; the sound of the car is going to alert it basically as soon as the picture does.

[TheThan]

At eight feet tall, it does indeed sound like a moose, keep in mind it’s dark out, humans have particularly poor night vision, and you know, an imagination to enhance our own fears.

Cracked has some interesting insight into it

[thubby]

The only two things lacking, Is pointy antlers and the walking. I've never seen anything in the world walk like that before.

moose do have pointy antlers. only the males and they shed them seasonally. iirc this is the time of year they'd be growing them.

the walking is literally the only part that would remotely suggest its not a moose. if, however, it was a quadruped and you simply could not see the other 2 legs (if they were physically behind the part of it you could see, for instance), it would look rather strange.