The Devil in the Woods

I wanted to relate an experience my uncle and I had from my childhood. I grew up in a small town called Hamptonville within NC. Some people pass by it on the highway and literally never knew it was there. It's just a rural farming community basically. There was a road about a mile from us called Crater Road. Growing up I heard different creepy stories about a particular section of woods on one end of it. There was a good sized creek that zigzagged through and created a couple swampy like area's within it. I overheard a group of girl's talking on my school bus one day when I was very young. One of them was relaying a story about her older sister partying and swimming with a group of friend's by the creek. She said they saw a figure in the woods that she called The Devil! They all high-tailed it out of there after spotted the figure. Fast forward a few years later and I was probably 11 or 12. My uncle Frankie would visit from Boone during the summer to fish and winter's to hunt with my dad and vice versa. Well one particular summer we had started fishing on Crater Road. About a half mile down there was a small bridge and a long path on the right side of the road that lead to one end of the creek. The path was inaccessible by vehicle and you had to walk almost a mile to get to that particular area. One time my Father, my uncle and i had went to fish there probably around lunch time. My uncle pointed something out after we parked the truck at the beginning of the path that was underneath the small bridge. It was a Bluetick Coonhound hunting dog lying dead in the creek and his stomach had been ate on. The rest of him was virtually untouched. My dad and I owned coon hunting dogs and hunted regularly at the point in time. They can be very expensive and most hunter's don't let them just roam around when they aren't hunting. Unless he was lost on a hunt maybe and the owner couldn't locate him. There wasn't a house for probably another mile or two up the road. Very odd we thought. Well a couple weeks later my uncle had come down and wanted to fish that area once again. My dad was busy and I told him I wanted to tag along. It was probably around 4:30 5:00 pm when we headed out. We parked his ol black Ford pickup truck, grabbed our fishing gear and started our hike in. That area always gave me the creeps! Not just the stories or the dog we had found but just the looks and vibe of the area was ominous. Heavily forested on both sides of the path all the way down to the fishing spot. That evening we had fairly decent luck and stayed until it was dark. I hated the idea of walking back in pitch black darkness. We didn't think to bring a flashlight because we hadn't intended staying that long. As we start up the path we started to hear on the right side of us in the wood's a raccoon screaming. I knew the sound well because like I said I had coonhunted a lot with my dad. Well the screaming got extremely close to us and then it would go really far away rapidly. At first we thought it was 2 different one's screaming but then we realized what was going on. We could hear leaves and branches being smacked towards the tops of the trees when the screaming was near and could still hear it but not as loud when it was farther away. Something was throwing this raccoon to another something which would catch it and throw it back. I've been in the woods my whole life and coon hunted as well as deer hunted since i could walk and I've never heard anything like this before! Coons are stealthy and they can move quick but this thing was being thrown over the tops of tree's that was 40 to 50 feet high and higher. What could throw this thing in pitch black darkness, with several surrounding trees and see good enough to catch it? My answer is Sasquatch! My uncle and dad had grew up in the mountains of Boone, hunting and fishing their entire lives and knew the woods and its inhabitants very well. I've never seen my uncle Frankie scared a day in his life until that night! He said the hairs on his arms were sticking straight up from the goosebumps he had. He said "I wish I wouldn't have left my pistol locked in the truck"! He kept repeating what in the hell is that?! As we got to the truck finally the raccoon let out one last ungodly shriek and everything grew silent. No crickets or any other living thing in the woods that night was making a peep. We drove back to the house and told my dad about the encounter. My uncle mentioned what if whatever killed the dog had a hand in what we experienced that night. If you look on the BFRO(Bigfoot Field Research Organization)website and look for reports in Yadkin County you will find 2. One was from my former music teacher in elementary school who encountered a white colored Bigfoot when he was a child in Hamptonville probably 4 to 5 miles from Crater Road. I had an another encounter with a good friend of mine close to that area in 2018 of something massive stomping around in the woods and sounded to be walking up right on 2 legs. I no longer live in that area but decided to take a drive down old Crater Road recently. The entrance to the path has a steel cable in front of it now and is all grown up. Still just as creepy and ominous as I remember it. I plan on doing a documentary this Summer and I might just camp out there if I don't lose my nerve.