In recent years, Hollywood has released a number of motion pictures, such as the “Underworld” series, that have created a pseudo-history of a centuries’ old conflict between vampires and were-wolves (illustration by Dan Allen).

      Mom made it to the door. I pushed her aside and shut the door, and we locked it. She shut the lights off so no one could look in the house. My baby brother, Adam, was sleeping, and after a while I lay down. I was so worn out from running. I heard someone turning the knob of the door—and opening it! I could hear what sounded like the footsteps of a horse moving from room to room toward me.

      All of a sudden it was next to my bed. I screamed for Mom to turn the lights on, but she was having a hard time getting up. It was like she was in a daze. I felt the Skin Walker’s hand on me, touching my face and throat! His smelly breath and loud breathing were right next to me. The monster was tall and skinny half human and half something that looked like a cow. His hands were rough and hairy, and he had long nails.

      I couldn’t breathe! I screamed again and asked God to help me. It scratched my neck, and I was bleeding. When Mom managed to turn on the light, it vanished. Mom saw three scratches on my neck and said it was the Devil that had left his claw marks on me. We got up and checked the door. It was still locked, but the door hadn’t mattered to the Skin Walker.

      By morning the scratches were gone, just vanished. I wrote two stories years later that I called “The Devil’s Claws” and “The Skin Walker.”

       Encountering a Demonic Black Dog of Evil

       Paranormal researcher and author Angela Thomas is also executive co-producer and co-host of the P.O.R.T.A.L. Paranormal Talk Radio Show (http://www.oct13baby.com/). In this eerie account, she shares an encounter with a demonic entity which at first assumed the form of a black dog. Historically, as many readers are aware, the Black Dog specter has been commonly linked with haunting phenomenon and often as a precursor to werewolf or vampiric activity. The following is in Angela Thomas’s words.

      The sun was setting when I arrived at the strange house my grandparents now called home. The house was nothing compared to the two-story, farm house they moved from that sat on two hundred acres nestled near the only lake in the area. It was plain with wide, white planks that resembled every other house on Second Street in Bloomfield, Indiana. There was something eerily different about it. I wanted to leave, and I should have left, but the others with me would not have understood. An uninviting aura surrounded the house, and it appeared to have a life of its own.

      I quickly dismissed the thoughts when we were shuffled in the house, and led directly into the bedrooms we were to sleep in that night. Nothing looked unusual in the bedroom that my sister Sandy and I were to share except an antique, cast iron crib that had been passed down through several generations to my grandmother.

      The rest of the evening was spent listening to my grandmother chatter about the move into town, and how my grandfather had taken ill shortly thereafter. He was not present in the living room among relatives. Instead he lay ill on his bed. The bedroom door was open, and I could see him lying there almost lifeless. The doctors have no explanation. “He has been like this for awhile,” my grandmother said. As she continued to speak, I saw what I thought was a large, black dog passing in front of my grandfather’s bed.

      “When did you start bringing a large dog into the house?” I asked. I was concerned. After all, it was out of character for her to permit a large animal in the house. “We don’t have a dog. We gave all of the animals away before we moved here,” she explained.

      I knew I had seen something in front of his bed, and I quickly followed the path of where I thought this “dog” had gone. I searched every room—nothing. Making my way back into the living room, I noticed the lights had dimmed, and the room seemed filled with a foggy haze. The lights blinked bright again.

      “It’s an old house,” Grandmother said, looking directly at me. She must have sensed how uncomfortable the entire house made me. Her explanation, I assumed, was to reassure me that nothing was wrong with the lights, but I had a feeling her words meant a little more than the mere wiring functions of an old place. Old places typically did not bother me. In fact, I had an affinity to all things old. Perhaps it was due to my own intuitive sensitivity that made such things inviting.

      For several years, I had experienced unusual things, and a special knowing which I automatically thought others shared. Holding items, touching walls and expecting things to happen before they happened were part of my abilities, but there was no control then, or any way for me to alter my experiences. If I had touched the walls within the old house, I may have known what would soon change my life, and influence my perceptions of the world.