Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Brad Steiger
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They would ask Bobby what was wrong, and he would say, “That man who comes into my bedroom hits me with a belt” (art by Ricardo Pustanio).
Mom never had anybody baby-sit us, and she told the doctor this.
On a Monday, Mom woke Bobby for school. He said his arm really hurt, and he started screaming.
Mom rushed him to the hospital. His arm was broken. I learned from a neighbor while Bobby and Mom were in the hospital that a man used to live in that house in the 1960s with his two sons and daughter. They were all under seven years of age. He beat them, and one, the older son, even died from a beating. He was arrested, and killed himself in jail.
The younger boy and girl still lived in the neighborhood. I went to school with one of their children, and I went over to visit. When Mom came to pick me up, the daughter noticed Bobby’s broken arm. She asked Mom what happened, and Mom told her of the strange things that had been happening in Bobby’s room.
The girl got a look of terrible fear on her face. She advised Mom to move away. She said she didn’t know about ghosts, but she was sure Bobby was in danger.
The neighborhood was going to the dogs anyway, so we decided to move. We heard that a few months later that a family had moved in with a month old baby. The next day, the baby was found dead in its crib. It had a huge cut across its chest, and a bruised face. I guess you couldn’t even recognize the baby.
The parents were tried for child abuse and the death, but no evidence was ever found that they did anything to their baby so they were released.
I am nineteen now. I was about ten years old when all this went on, but I remember enough to know that the ghost of that terrible man was abusing my brother.
“It was a very bright moonlit night,” Jannice said. “I was in my bed and wide awake enjoying the moonlight. Everyone else was asleep. The moon was directly in line with my large window which had no curtains on it so my room was bright enough to read by. This window was at the foot of my bed to the left. Next to it on the wall facing my bed was another large window with no curtains. To the right of the end of my bed was the opening into my room. There was no door. My room had been added on and opened into my brothers’ room.”
Here is Jannice’s recollection of the nightmarish encounter:
It is a straight line of doors from the outside door to my brothers’ door to my door opening. It is very easy and quick to move from outdoors to my room. The outside door was never locked. We lived in the country, and all the neighbors were either friends or family.
I had a bad feeling come over me as I was laying down in my bed. I heard the outside door open and close softly. I heard someone walk across the living room into my brothers’ room and then into my room. I was laying down so I could not see the end of my bed. I was too terrified to look. I knew something horrible was standing there. I do not know how long I laid there too scared to look. I finally could not stand it anymore and sat up in bed.
It was not a person at all. I sat there frozen looking at it standing in the bright moonlight right at the end of my bed. It was inches from the end of my bed. Its body was facing the window to the left of the end of my bed and it was hunched over as it was taller than my low ceiling. Its hideous face was turned towards me with its arms held as if creeping. Its body was covered in hair that looked dark.
It was glaring at me. I could feel it was furious with me for not submitting to them. I thought it was going to kill me. I tried to scream but I could not make a sound. I was trapped in my bedroom with a hairy monster that hated me and wanted me dead.
I did what any little girl would do. I lay back down and covered my head expecting to be killed at any moment. I heard it go back out of my room, through my brothers’ room, across the living room and back out the door. I still could not make a sound.
When I finally got my voice back, I screamed for my mom. She asked what was wrong from her bed and I hysterically told her what I had seen. She told me it was a dream and to go back to sleep.
I did not go back to sleep.
It was not a dream.
She did not even come to calm me down. I never trusted her after that.
DEMONS FROM THE DARKSIDE
Recently my friend and colleague cryptozoologist Paul Bartholomew of Whitehall, New York, informed me of a terrifying experience that a National Guardsman had undergone in the fall of October 1987. Because of his fear of the laughter barrier, he had waited 20 years to share his nightmarish encounter.
The guardsman had been awakened one night by the sound of his kitchen door being slammed open. He heard furniture being tossed around his living room.
Picking up a baseball bat to defend himself, he decided to go downstairs and rout the intruder (or intruders), the guardsman found that the uninvited visitor had ascended the stairs to confront him in his bedroom.
The guardsman found himself paralyzed, unable to move, as his descent was blocked by a six-foot-five inch, 300-pound entity that had red-glowing eyes and that smelled like rotten eggs.
The guardsman, being a religious man, shouted out a prayer—and the creature vanished.
Overcome by the bizarre and frightening circumstances, the guardsman collapsed back on his bed and awakened in the morning wondering if he had just experienced the worst dream of his life.
When he went downstairs, however, he found the front door wide open and his furniture either broken or thrown about from room to room.
Over twenty years later, the guardsman wondered aloud to Paul Bartholomew if he had encountered an angry Bigfoot or a malicious demon.
In essence, the guardsman had expressed a persistent enigma that often arises when one is monster hunting: Are there times when we encounter an entity that has intruded into our reality from a world unseen?
The folklore of Tibet includes numerous accounts of malignant, shape-shifting demons that lurk near trees, rocks, lakes, and many other places to seize men and animals and suck away their vital breath and life force. One of the most vicious of these entities is the Thags yang, a demon that can appear as a tiger, a man, or a weretiger. The terrible Thags yang follow those travelers who are not sufficiently protected by strong spiritual beliefs and drain their life essence from them. They also lurk near villages, seeking out the weak and the foolish who do not utter their prayers of protection.
The guardsman had been awakened one night by the sound of his kitchen door being slammed open. He heard furniture being tossed around his living room.
Could our guardsman from New York have come face-to-face with such a being? Could his home have been invaded by a demon that could appear as a Bigfoot-type creature?
How a demon is defined is determined in large part by who is framing the definition.
When Socrates spoke of consulting his “daimon,” he was not referring to an evil spirit or a fallen angel, but to his tutelary spirit. The ancient Greeks believed that everyone had an attendant entity to which he or she might turn for advice in dealing with life’s problems.
The Romans called their “daimon,” their guardian angel, a “genius,” which could also be interpreted as roughly analogous to the soul.
Since those days of antiquity, however,