Off Topic: Bizzare Real Life Happenings (wide awake and not dreaming):
In early November 1980, it was true warm, mild, Indian Summer, as we camped out far above the Horseshoe Curve, on a remote firetrail. We had plenty of M-80's and were thoroughly enjoying blowing a long plastic bugle horn, making a totaly absurd ruckus and being a complete nuisance with wanton disregaurd for civil obedience. It was a moonless pitch black night, and only the campfire illuminated the wilderness, along with a candle illuminated Jack O Lantern that we had crooked from someones front porch steps.
My friend who was scoping out the heavy woods with a flashlight said: "There's something out there in the woods, I keep hearing things". I proceeded to tell him he was a mental case and was stewed out of his gord. Leaves scurried, sticks crackling, and a small barking sound emitted from far away up in the deep woods. My friend astutely proclaimmed: "It sounds like a lost puppy, I'm going to find out what it is". I told him: "Its probably a woods critter like a opposum, woods kitty (skunk), or fox". " Don't go up there, you'll get lost in the pitch black woods, and your flashight batteries will die out...and I'm not comming searching to find you". He took a keroscene lantern with him as he explored farther and farther up the firetrail. Winding his way through the dense forrest, the trees shimmered, and made moving vertical long shaddows, from the lanterns light beams. Finally, all the thick forrest had totally occluded all light from his lantern, and he disappeared up around the bend, completely out of sight, into the darkness.
He was gone for @ 20 minutes...I began to worry. Suddenly I heard screams heard him yelling at the top of his lungs: "Somethings after me, Help, Run for you life...its right behind me...run" ! As he ran and passed me by at a high rate of speed he tripped over the huge cooler that we had laying on the trail. Head over heals he flew, the lantern dropped and his flashlight went a flying. As he flew by me, lept into the car, and locked all the doors, cowering in fear. I laughed and shouted: "What are you nutz...there's nothing out there, after you"...
But how wrong I was ! For no sooner had the words left my lips, the ground trembled, and shook as huge pounding earthshaking footsteps like that from a sasquach, black bear, bull elk, or man on horseback came rushing towards me out of woods in the pitch blackness of night. It was vertually right upon me, within feet, I imagined the steaming breath of an onrushing, impending, attacking creature, about to schmizzen me. I turned and RAN so fast...Like a bat outa' hell ! I dropped the flashlight, and I ran so fast...that I was inside the car before the flashlight even hit the ground ! Great...can't find the car keys, no flashlight...and the likes of "Jason" is roaming about, right outside the car, in the dark woods.
All night long...it seemed like an eternity, until the gray shades of morning twilight finally started to creep in. For on the night before, you couldn't see your hand right in front of your face on the totally moonless night. Venturing outside into the morning mist, (bravely), now that you could see about. We found nothing...but silent, erie, stillness as the early morning mist hung in the damp woods.
Later that day we heard a strange ever increasing roaring noise comming from the northeast, at an extremely high rate of speed. Suddenly at @ 200 mph a F-4 Phantom II jet plane on a terrain hugging flying mission buzzed the treetops, almost clipping us. As he was canted cockpit in towards us, I saw the pilots black visored helmit turn for an instant, looking right at us, for a nano-second...WOOOOSH...and it was all gone, in the blink of an eye. In shock, awe, and disbelief I turned to my friend, and said to him: "Did you just see...what I saw" ? "OK, that's it, I'm not staying here another night...this place is downright spooky...start packing your things up" ! Bad things come in batchs of three's, and the sun is starting to go down, again. Lets make like a tree...and leaf.