♪♪
[ animal growling ]
[ crow caws ]
♪♪
[ distant scream ]
♪♪
[ animal shrieks ]
♪♪
[ wings flutter ]
[ dog growls ]
some type of spirit attached itself to me.
It felt like I was not in my body.
Kelcee: The whole bed was shaking.
His eyes are rolled back.
It was absolutely terrifying.
He was like, "I think I got possessed."
[ screams ]
it's gotten more and more dangerous.
Was it trying to kill me?
[ screams ]
♪♪
[ growls ]
john: I felt in danger.
I felt, like, high alert, fight-or-flight, you know?
[ growls ]
something demonic-related.
I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
♪♪
my name is emilio sanchez.
I'm from denver, colorado.
It's a beautiful mountainous state.
I try to be outside as much as humanly possible.
Very few people are just kind of stay-at-home bodies in colorado.
[ dog barks ]
my family's cabin is in red river, new mexico.
From denver, it's about a 7-hour drive.
It's well-hidden inside the woods.
It's pretty secluded.
When I was 11, I would hike up there.
It was dense forest.
And as I got further in,
all you heard was birds and, you know, the wind blowing.
It's beautiful.
But that's when this whole thing started to get bad.
[ wolf howls ]
I've never really told anyone about any of this.
My mother and my stepfather,
we were just taking a few days for a family get-together.
It was probably about 6:30, 7 in the morning.
We were just in the cabin, kind of in the woods,
playing a card game.
You sure you're not coming?
Yes, I'm sure. Okay.
Well, you've got the key.
You'll have to let us in. All right.
My parents went down to the lake, getting fish for breakfast
because I was supposed to actually go fishing with them,
but I didn't want to.
♪♪
[ sticks crunching ]
♪♪
[ creature quietly growls ]
♪♪
[ footsteps approaching ]
I heard in the distance,
it sounded like someone was walking on the driveway.
I thought it was my mom coming back to make breakfast.
There was, like, a fog, you know, like a low mist
hovering over the ground a little bit,
but I couldn't see anyone.
♪♪
but then I saw this thing,
and he was standing off in the distance.
It was maybe about 50 yards or so.
It was just standing there, and the best I can describe it,
it was kind of a guy who had deer legs and a face.
It looked like someone wearing a hollowed-out deer skull.
I couldn't see his eyes,
but then it turned its head to me.
[ growling ]
where the eyes, like, should be, you just see black holes.
We looked at each other,
and that's when I knew it was something else.
I kind of got scared, so I hid below the windowsill.
[ creature stomps toward cabin ]
I could hear one footstep hit the gravel driveway,
and then from there, I hear three.
[ stomps three times toward cabin ]
and the next thing I know, it's at the cabin.
The distance from the porch of the cabin
to the end of the driveway is about 50 feet.
I don't know if it jumped or it flew or what,
but it covered that ground in three steps,
and it was on the porch.
[ heavy footsteps, stairs creaking ]
it started to walk up the stairs.
It was about 3 feet from the door at that point.
I was confused and really scared.
[ distorted woman's voice ] let me in.
I remember hearing my mom's voice.
Don't leave me out here!
I thought maybe what I saw was in my mind,
and my mom was on the porch.
I wasn't sure if should look out the window to see
if my mom was there or just stay hiding.
Open the door!
If it was my mom, she would keep asking me,
or she would put down whatever she was carrying
and open the door herself, and none of that happened.
I won't ask you again!
Let me in!
It was still asking to come in in my mom's voice,
but every time that it was refused entry,
it kind of got deeper.
[ extremely distorted voice ] open the door!
Answer me!
It sounded like someone recorded my mom's voice
and played it backwards.
Open the door!
It happened within the blink of an eye,
from trying to casually open the door
to it kind of kicking and punching at the door.
I didn't open the door because there was no way
that that was my mom.
Let me in!
It was the creature with the deer head.
Answer me!
Open the door!
It seemed like it was trying to break down the door.
The main feeling was just fear of
what's going to happen if it gets in?
[ door handle jiggling rapidly, knocking ]
it just stopped hitting the door.
It stopped asking to come in.
I heard loud footsteps leaving the porch,
and when I looked back up, it was gone.
When my parents got back to the cabin,
they said they didn't see anything.
They didn't hear anything while they were down at the lake.
They didn't hear anything walking up.
While we were fishing?
They said, you know, it could have just been an animal
who was eating a deer.
[ creature growls ]
I asked my parents, you know,
if there was anything in the world that was like that?
I'm fine.
They said no.
I didn't think that I would ever see it again.
♪♪
for years, I questioned what I saw a lot.
It would come up, you know, every now and then
when we're sitting around campfires
or hanging out with friends, but it wasn't always on my mind
until the second time that I saw it.
It was a late may day, and it was crisp air.
It was in the morning.
It was beautiful.
Cleanest air you can breathe in.
It was about a 37-mile hike on the top of the madison range,
so it was around 12,000 feet.
There is not much wildlife up there,
and my plan was just to hike from peak to peak.
It was just me.
There is not a lot of people that know about that trail.
I was just hiking along the trail,
just enjoying the scenery.
I could hear birds singing in the distance.
I can hear the wind, bugs, crickets.
[ insects and birds chirping ]
then it got quiet.
There wasn't any birds singing.
There wasn't any bugs.
There was nothing.
I started feeling really anxious.
It seemed like someone was watching me.
I saw someone standing off to the side.
[ creature growls ]
I thought, "maybe some crazy up in the woods of montana
playing jokes on people."
I've seen deer, elk, moose, all that,
and it wasn't anything like that.
I saw what looked to the be the creature again.
All I could see was its upper body, the old deer head.
It looked exactly the same.
It was just standing there watching me.
I was startled.
It kind of put everything in concrete for me
that what I saw the first time when I was 11 was...
It was real.
I just stared at it, and after a certain time,
I did look away,
and when I went to go look back, it wasn't there.
After it disappeared, I waited to see
if it was going to reappear somewhere else.
There was nothing, so after about 10 minutes,
I just kept on going.
I was afraid that it was kind of stalking me, in a way.
On the hike, I would just leave my car at the trailhead.
It was miles away, and I ended up spending the night
because I didn't want to drive that late.
After the creature disappeared,
I was more afraid that it was going to reappear closer,
that it was stalking me all night.
[ rustling ]
[ creature growls ]
[ screams ]
sanchez: That night, it was the first time
that I ever had a nightmare about the creature.
The dream ended that it was on top of me and killed me.
Before that night, I never really had bad dreams.
I remember waking up that morning,
and I was afraid to kind of be alone.
That low sense that I get when I feel like it's around me.
Since then, I think that it's attached itself to me
in some way.
It's kind of always been lingering or looming around me,
and I can always kind of feel it.
It was about a couple months later.
I met kelcee,
and that's when the spirit started getting
a little bit more violent.
Hi, I'm really glad you made it.
Well, come on in.
Just take your shoes off.
My name is kelcee coverd.
[ laughs ]
I met emilio through a friend of a friend,
and we got along really well, so we started hanging out.
Ah. I got to cheers that.
Yeah.
One night, he asked me, he was like,
"did I ever tell you the story about, like, my thing?"
I was like, "no."
he was like, "oh, yeah, I've got this thing
that follows me around," and I was like, "yeah, okay.
I'm sure you do. I bet you have whatever."
emilio and I, we're just really good friends.
He would just crash at my place
because he kind of lives a little bit further away.
Just kind of made it easier on him
to be there every now and again, and I had no problem with it.
[ cat yowling ]
[ creature growls ]
that night, emilio fell asleep.
Like, it was, like, a very heavy sleep.
Like, he was out of it.
I couldn't sleep, and I kind of felt something,
like some pressure on the bed, like as if something,
like a cat or something had jumped on the bed.
I automatically think that's weird.
I don't have a cat or anything like that,
so I think, "maybe emilio moved, and it, like,
startled me or something like that, I don't know,"
and so I fell back asleep.
A little while later, I started to feel something,
like, touching my leg.
Once again, first instinct,
"emilio, why are you touching me? What are you doing?"
so I kind of wake up, and he's dead asleep next to me.
I, like, feel, like, this sensation,
and it's, like, harder and harder and harder.
Ah!
I'm, like, freaking out for a second.
It started to feel like something was, like,
scratching my leg.
So I sit up, and it stops.
I try to wake emilio up. I go to, like, shake him.
Emilio didn't wake up at all.
I'm really scared at this point.
Like, it was so vivid that I don't know
how I could have been imagining a feeling like that.
It definitely wasn't a peaceful rest of the night, for sure.
[ tapping ]
I was so scared that something else
was going to happen that night.
I didn't wake up the next morning feeling like
I had actually slept last night.
Immediately, I just think,
"don't even bother mentioning it.
You probably dreamt it."
so I brush it off.
I pull the cover off.
Obviously, something happened to me last night to cause this.
Ow!
Emilio!
Sanchez: The scratch marks on her leg,
it looks like a human was trying to...
Basically, like, scratching themselves way too hard,
and I was kind of becoming concerned for kelcee.
[ groans ]
I don't know what to do, and it just, like,
really kind of freaked me out.
I told him that morning, I was like,
"I had this crazy dream last night,"
and he looked kind of concerned when I told him that.
The whole time I'm telling him he just looks, like, grave.
Sanchez: I kind of was making the connection
that maybe my thing that's been following me all these years
is upset that I'm around someone.
When things do get bad, I don't want people to get hurt.
That night, we're watching a movie,
and he falls asleep, and he kind of starts
kicking a little bit, kind of, like, rolling around a lot.
[ whimpering ]
he starts kind of, like, mumbling, and I thought,
"that's really weird. He's never talked in his sleep before."
no. Don't... Don't...
I'm getting ready to wake him up,
and he just starts convulsing.
What's happening?
Hey, emilio? His eyes are rolled back.
The whole bed was shaking.
It was absolutely terrifying.
And then all of a sudden, it just stops.
His body, like, goes limp.
I remember waking up standing over kelcee.
It felt like I was not in my body.
It felt like someone else kind of had the reins,
so to speak.
Emilio.
I couldn't, like, move.
I couldn't do anything, but I could see what was going on.
Please wake up.
[ creature growls ]
is it over?
Emilio? I'm so sorry.
Emilio, wake up.
Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.
Suddenly, I just get this really heavy feeling of,
like, really bad anxiety.
In the corner of the room, across the room,
there's just this shadowy figure.
It reaches almost all the way up to the ceiling.
[ creature growls ]
I think I'm imagining things.
I, like, blink, shake my head, look over.
It's still there, and it's just looking directly at me.
I'm panicking. What is that?
How is this thing here?
I've got to be dreaming.
[ screams ]
and I kind of scoot back,
try to wake emilio up, so I turn.
I go to, like, shake him, and I turn back, and it's gone.
I'm looking all over, thinking is it somewhere else?
Did it move? Is it closer?
What's happening?
And there's just nothing.
I definitely have no doubts
about anything being there anymore.
I was like, "I swear to god I saw that thing."
he tells me, he's like, "something crazy happened."
I saw through its eyes.
Is it over?
I was like, "what are you talking about?"
and he was like, "I think I got possessed."
whatever this is, it's gotten more and more dangerous.
When there's people like kelcee who always want to make sure
that I'm okay, it goes after them.
I don't want kelcee to have to deal with that,
so I kind of cut myself out of the equation.
If you're not around me, it's not going to affect you.
It was just a really crazy, crazy, crazy experience.
Emilio is like, "maybe the best thing I should do
right now is just to kind of try and, like, isolate myself.
Be, like, alone for a little bit.
Maybe it will, like, cool down."
ever since then, everything has been fine.
It call kind of, like, went away.
It definitely didn't really change our relationship,
emilio and I.
We're just really close, really good friends.
Sanchez: There's times that I feel like I'm crazy.
I have been getting urges to return to red river.
I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.
There's definitely things out there that we don't know about,
whether it be creatures in the woods or ghosts or demons.
The thing that's been following me all these years,
it's gotten more and more dangerous.
[ creature roars ]
I was afraid that it was trying to kill me,
but I just want to know what it wants.
I want to know what the endgame is.
[ growling ]
[ creature growls ]
john: I felt in danger.
I felt, like, high alert, fight-or-flight, you know?
Something demonic-related.
I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
It happened on the outskirts of asheville, north carolina,
on the blue ridge parkway,
a few hours away from charlotte, north carolina.
The area is heavily wooded, high mountains, big peaks,
big valleys, largest mountain chain
east of the mississippi river.
Known as the smoky mountains because it gets heavily
dense fog up there at certain parts of the year
and just an overall beautiful place.
The road -- it had two big overlooks
to pull your car into, hang out with your friends,
and you kind of oversee the valley.
Really cool place to hang out at night,
which there wasn't much to do in the town,
so that's kind of what we did.
We would go up there Friday, Saturday nights.
On that particular night, I picked my friend dennis
up at his house, and we're going to go meet up
with our other friend in the overlook.
We get on the parkway, and maybe a couple miles in,
you come around a bend,
and right when I came around the bend,
we notice on the right-hand side of the road a pickup truck.
What's that?
It was right off the road,
maybe about 15, 20 yards into the woods,
and it was odd because it was the middle of the night.
We noticed this man walking back to his truck,
and he had a shovel in his hands,
and it was an outdoorsy kind of guy.
We both kind of looked at each other and go, like,
"well, that's strange,"
but I mean, it was just a really weird sight to see.
We just went up there like usual, met up with friends,
had a good time, a few hours later,
drove back down the mountain.
Let's go, man.
Hey, this is the spot.
Let's see if that guy is still here.
My friend dennis and I, when we got near the spot
where we saw the man in the truck...
He was by the exit sign.
- Ah! - Geez!
...The light came on in my car.
The light, dome light, flickered a couple times,
and it was pitch-black outside, so that light blinded you.
Scared the **** out of us, basically.
It has never flickered ever,
other than when you open the car door,
like it's supposed to, it would come on.
It spooked us, but we kind of laughed it off,
almost like it being coincidental
that it went off,
even though it made no sense why it went off.
Nothing too much happened for a little while.
The strange thing is, after that night,
I'd always expect my light to go off
where we saw that man coming down with a shovel,
and it would just flicker in that spot.
That's when it really hit me that this is beyond coincidence,
that this is...
I mean, I was spooked.
I was freaked out by it.
It got to the point that I actually shut it off,
so it wouldn't come on even when I opened the door.
Hey, what are you doing?
This light is freaking me out, man.
Dennis believed me.
I know he believed me because he could just tell
by my expression that it went off.
You know, I was kind of, like, spooked,
but at the same time kind of intrigued by it.
Nothing too much happened for a little while
until a few months later, my friend dennis and I
drove up to the first overlook just to hang out.
And my friend dennis looked up, and he saw something.
Hey, what does that look like to you?
Without hesitation, he said it looks like a ghost girl
with her head titled, hair coming down.
You could see eyes, and it was clear as day.
It was just the weirdest thing ever.
That night we felt that all this was kind of tied together --
this man and his shovel, the light going off...
- Ah! - Geez!
I felt it had some sort of connection,
like, just intuition.
Maybe this girl or somebody was trying to reach out to us
in some sort of way beyond our comprehension.
Maybe we saw this guy.
No one else saw him.
Maybe he killed this girl, buried her.
Could this really be, like, you know, some dead girl,
like, calling out to us?
[ distorted voice ] I died.
It looked like a ghost.
It was more than my 20-year-old mind could comprehend.
Later that night, I dropped dennis off at his house,
and I'm making my way back to my house.
Geez! [ popping ]
I'm driving along when I hear that loud, sharp pop
in the back of my car.
It happened almost right across
from where I saw that man and his truck.
No service.
I had no cellphone reception up there.
It was 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning, quiet and eerie.
[ creature snarls ]
♪♪
I was freaked out.
[ distorted voice ] I died.
I just felt like I was being watched the whole time.
I heard a snarl.
[ creature snarls ]
moments after that, my car came back on again.
[ car starts, engine revs ]
[ creature snarling ]
about 20 feet after pulling out of there,
my light came back on.
I had shut my light off, but it would still come on.
I thought that girl we saw, maybe it was her spirit.
I felt like, you know, this is beyond coincidental.
These are signs given to us.
I felt like I had to do something.
I decided to call the asheville police department
anonymously and just say,
"hey, listen, I don't know if this means anything
more than what it means, but I saw a man in his truck
walking back with a shovel late at night"...
It was about 12, 1 o'clock in the morning,
out by the park lane exit sign.
...The time I saw it, where I saw it at, and just said,
you know, "you may want to, like, look into this."
no, no, I'd rather not give my name.
I didn't mention any of the odd things that had happened
because I didn't want them to think I was crazy.
That night, we had gone up to the parkway
just to go play some music,
so we pulled into a secluded spot
closer to the first overlook.
It was late at night about 1 o'clock in the morning,
and we started hearing voices, kind of, like,
laughing, girl and guy,
coming from different areas close to where we're at.
[ laughter ]
we would stop to listen, and it would stop too.
We would play again, and you would hear it,
it would get louder, and then you would stop playing,
and it would kind of trail off.
You would still hear it, but it would get lower and lower
until you didn't hear it anymore.
[ laughter ]
you know, what the hell is going on, you know?
This is eerie, spooky,
and it's not like it's coming from the mountains.
It's right there.
It's just getting creepier and creepier.
[ creature snarls ]
- you hear that? - Yeah.
John: We started hearing what sounded like a snarl.
[ creature snarls ]
that really chilled to the bone, you know?
Let's get out of here.
We hightailed out of that spot.
Like, we just knew we had to get the **** out of there.
Dennis: Go! Come on!
I just wanted to get out of there and go down the mountain.
"let's get the **** out of here.
Let's get the **** out of here and go down here,"
and dennis was like, "I've just got to piss, man."
and so we pulled into the first overlook
where we saw the man and his truck.
That's the only reason we pulled into that overlook
was because he had to take a piss.
We were the only car there.
Hurry up.
It just felt strange up there.
It felt like we were being watched,
but it felt, like, almost static-charged.
The hairs on my arm were sticking up like a storm
is coming in or something.
That sense like some **** is just going to happen.
[ growling ]
and I was about to turn back to my car,
and that's when I started hearing what sounded like hooves
but like, just two-legged, you know,
something with two legs walking and walking from the area
we were just at, and it's just pitch-black.
And in that same moment, dennis turns around
and starts heading back, we look at each other.
Him and I, without saying anything,
realize that there's some ****
going on right now, and it's getting louder,
and it's getting faster, and it's getting closer to us.
[ footsteps approaching ]
[ imitating footsteps ]
♪♪
the sense we both had to get in the car
and to get the **** out of there.
[ car sputtering ]
that sound echoed throughout everywhere.
It was just so loud.
I looked at my side mirror,
and that's when I saw a giant with, like, horseshoes on.
Come on! The head looked like a goat.
The body looked like a big, jacked-up man.
I think I might have said, like, "don't you see that?
The **** was that? Did you see that?"
and he says, "see what? I heard it. I heard it."
go!
[ car starts ]
everything that comes back to me comes back
to seeing that guy in his truck.
That was really what just had the snowball effect, you know?
And it grew from there.
This man and his shovel, the light going off,
the demonic girl,
and then this was the culmination of it all
was seeing this thing.
I don't know what its agenda was.
I don't know what it was there for.
I don't know if we just happened to be at the road
at the wrong time, wrong night,
and stumbled across something we shouldn't have seen.
I feel like it was something dark, that it was a rock
that should have been, you know, left unturned.
After that experience, I didn't want to experience that.
I didn't want anyone else I went with to experience that.
I would keep my trips solely going during the daytime
or passing through, yeah, during the day.
I wouldn't go there at night again after that.
[ creature snarling ]