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Usually, I have no fear whatsoever of the outdoors.

There is something in the swamp,

staring at me.

It was extreme fear and doubt,

and I'm in trouble.

- David! - Get in the car!

What's going on?

I got to get out of there.

My name is David T. Leidy.

My wife and I really enjoy camping.

Ever since we met, we had always gone camping.

We like to stay at state parks,

national parks, generally quiet places.

We decided we would check out

the outer banks of north Carolina.

We had never been there.

It was unusually warm weather that year,

and so we decided we wanted to take advantage and go south,

so that would be warm for us.

We picked late October time.

It was a little quieter. Kids were back at school,

and a lot of people weren't vacationing at that time,

and we liked that.

The interstate highways are sort of bypassing everything,

and once you get off of the highway

onto the little local roads,

you get more of a feel of the communities.

Honey, just turn over here.

So we got off of the main road,

and we headed south toward Pettigrew state park.

It was getting darker and darker.

You know, the whole place had a creepy, creepy feeling.

We went by this one house,

and there were these people standing out in their yard.

And they all turned and looked at us go by

with our truck and our camper.

I just didn't get a good feeling.

Like,

first of all, why were they out there,

standing in the dark, and then why they were looking at us,

like, "Where in the world are they going?"

It's kind of creepy around here.

Don't you think?

Yeah.

The drive to the state park from Creswell

was pretty dark.

It got very creepy.

When we got to Pettigrew, it was completely open.

There were no trees around the campsites.

This is it?

It's a swamp.

The reality was we were going to be camping

in the middle of a swamp,

so I had a little bit of trepidation about it.

Who's this now?

The ranger pulled over.

He looked worried.

What you up to?

We were planning on spending the night here.

The park ranger said, "That's a nice park."

And he thought about it for a second, and he quickly said...

Yeah. I'm heading home, but I'll be back in the morning.

And when he said that,

we thought, "Why is he leaving?"

I just didn't want to stay there.

We were tired. It's dark,

and we just wanted to get out of there

and find a safe place to stay.

We drove away from Pettigrew, and my wife and I

looked at each other and said, "Well, that was weird.

I think we made the right decision."

We needed to find a decent-sized town

so that we could stay the night

in a shopping-center parking lot.

The only thing we could find was a decent-sized town

in the middle of Roanoke Island.

Found somewhere?

Yeah, but it's two hours from here.

It's not like we have a choice.

- You know, I remember Roanoke. - Yeah?

Roanoke was the site of the lost colony.

The first settlers to land in the new world from England,

they set up a colony on Roanoke Island

and were there roughly a year.

And when the next boat

came to supply the town

that they had established, they found no one.

I think we just hit something.

You want to take a look?

I really didn't want to stop

and investigate it in this place.

I felt this was a little too... Remote

for me to get out of the truck.

What if we hit something, and it's lying there injured?

Okay. I'll go see.

I pulled over

and stopped the truck.

The area where we are seems very desolate,

has a very lonely feeling about it.

On my way out the door, I thought about it

and grabbed the .357.

If anything else was out there,

I wanted to be able to protect myself.

I walk along the driver's side of the vehicle.

I check the truck.

I check the tires.

I check the hitch area.

I check the trailer, and I walk around to the back.

I heard his footsteps on the gravel and the road,

and as he got further away from the truck,

the footsteps got softer and softer,

and then his footsteps stopped.

Damn it.

I'm staring at the taillight,

and the hair on the back of my neck stands straight out,

and all the insect noises stop.

Been in the wood enough to know what that meant.

Usually, I have no fear whatsoever of the outdoors.

In that instant, I think

there is something in the swamp

staring at me.

I slowly turn to see if I can spot it,

and I see nothing.

I don't hear anything for maybe a minute.

I didn't see any movement outside the windows.

It was just still.

And I don't see anything.

And then I listen,

and I start to hear scrabbling noises

coming from my left.

The animal is about 20 yards away.

It was dog-like, wolf-like.

This was a large animal, about 4 feet tall...

...large, forward-facing ears like a German Shepherd.

There seemed to be tufts of hair sticking up

from the tops of the ears

and yellow, glowing eyes.

When I looked into this animal's eyes,

I saw the look of a hunter.

It was not the look of the dogs that I had trained in the past.

It was the look of a predator hunting.

And as I looked at him...

...he did something

that was so alien and so strange

that it haunts me to this day.

And I hear two distinct popping sounds.

He pushes off the rock with his front feet.

And he settles in on two legs.

I was shocked.

Now this dog-like, wolf-like creature

is standing on two legs. It's now taller

than any dog that I had come in contact with.

I really got a good look at him at that point.

He was at least 7 feet tall.

He was very muscular from the waist up.

There was a dark fur, hair,

like a mane around his shoulders,

and his paws weren't paws.

They were more like hands with claws sticking out of the end.

Lower half was a bit skinnier, and I couldn't see his feet,

but it looked like there was a short tail.

And it took a step forward

and made a low, growling noise.

Then he showed his teeth.

I can still see that.

They were glinting in the moonlight.

I can see it. I can still see it.

After the growl, I saw another one.

And I looked at him for no more than two or three seconds

and turned back,

and the first animal had moved 10 yards in my direction.

It strikes him in the shoulder.

And he didn't react

like I thought a .357 shot would have done to anything.

And he looked at me just like I punched him.

I thought, "I just made him mad."

I heard the loudest gun going off.

I panicked. I was very scared.

And I was hoping that he would come back,

and I'm waiting.

At that moment,

it was extreme fear and doubt.

I couldn't believe

that he absorbed that round.

I don't think another shot's going to help

unless I get him in the head.

I don't think I was going to be able to damage this guy.

And I'm in trouble.

I don't think I was going to be able to damage this guy.

I got to get out of there.

David!

Then I heard him running through the gravel

towards the car door.

Get in the car! Get in the car!

What's... what's going on?

He put it in gear and said, "Let's get out of here."

She just stared at me wide-eyed and said nothing.

She was shocked. I could tell she was in shock.

In the six years I'd known David,

I had never seen him in that state.

He was shaking.

I had never felt that scared before in my life.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest.

I felt scared.

I felt scared because he was so upset,

and I still didn't know what had happened.

I didn't say anything.

I mean, I know Lisa was staring at me.

She was looking at me, like, you know, I didn't say anything.

I probably didn't say anything

till we got all the way on to Roanoke.

As we approached civilization,

I could see he was calming down,

and I knew he was about ready to tell me.

I decided that I wasn't going to tell her everything.

He said, "I don't know what it was,"

and I said, "Well, what did it look like?"

He said, "Well, it kind of looked like a wolf."

I didn't want to tell her exactly what I had seen,

because I think, if I told her that,

it would scare her beyond anything

that she could think of.

But we got our act together and decided to go into the market

and get a few things.

There's this truck in the parking lot,

and this guy in there is just staring at me.

He had this menacing look on his face,

like he was ready to kill him.

And I thought, "I don't know what this is about."

And Dave said, "Who the heck is that?

I never saw this guy before."

You want to take that?

I'm just going to go and talk to him.

How you doing, there?

Hey. Can I help you?

And he immediately started apologizing

and said, "Oh, I am so sorry."

I thought you were a friend of mine.

You look exactly like a friend of mine,

and I just thought I was giving him a hard time.

"I'm really sorry."

I said, "That's all right. Happens all the time."

That's okay. You had a pretty scary look on you, though.

As he was telling me that, I'm looking in his truck,

and I notice there were two rifles behind him

in a rack on the window.

So, uh, you ever do any hunting around here?

And he looked at me, and he said, "Oh, yeah."

And I said, "You do any hunting in the swamp?"

He didn't answer me. He just stared at me. I said...

See anything strange in the woods?

He stopped.

I... if he could've dropped his jaw, he would have.

He looked at me, and...

And then he looked down, and he looked back up.

He said, "You know",

I thought I was the only one."

A couple years back,

I did see something weird out in the swamp.

First I thought it was a wolf.

"But it did something strange. It stood up."

I've never seen anything do that before.

I was thinking, "I'm not crazy."

It wasn't just me."

Have a good night.

He didn't tell me until after we got home

because he didn't want to spoil the trip for me.

I was shocked.

- What was that all about? - Go.

What was that all about?

But on the other hand,

it sort of made more sense

about the whole creepiness of the place

and that lost colony on Roanoke Island.

And I thought, "Maybe that's what happened to that colony."

I think there's things out there, and I think,

if you get a creepy feel about a place,

you know, especially if you're camping,

but, like, if you're hiking or just anywhere

where you just get a creepy feeling,

I think you should listen to your instincts

and get the heck out of there.

There may be creatures that we don't know about out there

that can do us harm.

Someone joked like,

"It's, like, straight out of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'."

No one wanted to admit something's not right here.

What is that?

I'm used to hearing animals.

That's like nothing I've ever heard before in my life.

I grew up in a small-town,

conservative, Christian family.

I grew up in an assemblies of god church.

I still remain a Christian to this day,

and so it's always played a big part in my life.

I got to school in August of 2006.

Hey. What's going on guys?

- Hey, man. - Hey.

I had found a pretty tight-knit group,

my now brother-in-law Joey,

our friend Jordan Brelow, and another friend named Rob.

These guys are, you know, still my best friends right now.

Our friend, Chris, the R.A., he came to us and said, "Hey."

You guys should go do this geocaching thing."

It's kind of of like online treasure hunting,

is the way that I describe it to people.

There was this website you would go to.

There would be coordinates for some sort of hidden item

somewhere in a given area.

Like, there will be a film canister hidden.

The idea is something's in the bottle,

and it's something stupid

like a buffalo nickel or whatever, you know.

And you take that thing out, and then you put something back

in that canister, and you hide it.

And then, you know, you go back on the website and say,

"Davey Shepherd found this."

We had to get out and go do something, and we thought,

"Yeah. That sounds like a pretty good time."

Chris said it's in Pickering Dam park.

It was super easy to find.

He gave us two pieces of advice.

He said, "If you can't hear the creek anymore",

you've gone too far."

And then he said, "It's hidden in a rock outcropping."

It's got to be around here somewhere, boys,

in one of these rocks.

So all of us plow into the woods,

and we start down this trail,

and every pile of rocks, every rock, every cliff,

every whatever, we're looking through

'cause we don't really know.

Come on, guys. Let's get hunting.

We walk back this little trail maybe 10 or so yards,

and there's this wooden bridge.

And it's really small, just wooden planks,

and you walk over this to the trail.

On my left is the creek, and then the right,

there's, like, some cliff-y type areas in that.

So we're kind of just scouring, and we're walking,

and we're walking, and we're walking,

and we can't see anything.

Hey, guys.

Is this it?

Shh. Shh. Shh.

The one thing that was constant

was that you could hear the creek.

You know, it's pretty fast-moving water.

You can kind of hear that water running next to you.

I was just checking. I can hear the creek.

So we're kind of walking further back, and you're thinking,

"Man, we're kind of getting deeper in the woods here."

Man, we're going kind of deep in these woods, though, Davey.

Do you see how dark it is out right now?

Come on, Jordan.

We're here now, and we're already breaking a few rules,

so let's just keep going.

You're not supposed to be at the park at night.

Again, that kind of raised the, like, risk level for us.

You sure this ain't some kind of wild goose chase, man?

People are getting a little annoyed,

and, you know, losing interest quickly.

Listen, everyone.

I can't hear anything.

I can't hear the creek anymore.

Someone finally says, "Hey, man.

Like, I can't hear the creek anymore."

And everybody is quiet, and we think, "Yeah, no."

No, I can't hear the creek anymore,

"so I think we've gone too far."

Don't you think we should turn back?

Let's just give it a little longer.

The canister will be around here somewhere.

Hey. Let's check that pile of rocks over there.

- Come on. - Fine, but 10 minutes

and I'm out of here, man.

For whatever reason, there was another pile of rocks

just a little bit further ahead,

and I think it was me who said,

"Well, why don't we just look in that last pile of rocks?"

As we started walking up this hill,

we came to, like, a clearing, a small circle.

The whole trail had been kind of, like, packed dirt and mulch.

This area, it, like, seemed like the dirt was,

like, freshly turned, which is just weird.

What's the story with the weird fence?

There was this fence kind of waist-high

going around this circle.

And it, like, was, like, this twisted metal chain,

not like chain link.

Like, it almost looked like bike chains

or something twisted together

to make this weird-looking fence.

Someone joked like, "Man, that fence, like, is, like",

straight out of 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'"

You know, it was just very unsettling.

Hey, guys. You better come have a look at these.

There was, like, some weird symbols...

...no symbol I've ever recognized...

...but were clearly purposefully put there

as a signifier of something.

What are they?

No one wanted to admit, like, something's not right here.

Like, "Hey, I'm a little bit worried about this."

We're kind of off from the group.

My buddy John, he says, "Did you hear that?"

And I thought, "Yeah. It's kind of weird."

What is that?

I don't know.

The sound, to me, sounded like this grunt or this growl.

To me, it sounded like something far away that was making a noise

saying, to something, like, "Hey, I'm here."

What the heck was that?

Whatever it is, it sounds angry.

And then, within seconds, this thing that you heard

and you thought was a mile or whatever off,

is now 10, 15 feet away from you.

Something doesn't want us here!

What is that?

It was so loud, and it was high-pitched screams

and, like, low, moaning groans at the same time.

It's not just one noise coming from one area.

It's coming from a 360-degree circle around us.

So is it 100 animals? Is it...

I don't know what it is, but either way,

it's terrifying.

I'm used to hearing animals in the woods and stuff,

and that's like nothing I've ever heard before in my life.

Is it an animal, bear?

I've never heard anything like that before.

Man, something doesn't want us here.

What is that?

- Get out of here! - Go!

- Let's get out of here! - Run, man!

At this point, everyone just takes off running.

There's no pretense left now. Like, everybody's gone.

- Run! Run! - Where the hell are we going?

Everybody ran and sprinted for three or four solid minutes,

I mean, you know, dead sprint as fast as you could go.

I kind of slow up, 'cause I realize, you know,

I came here with like four other people,

and none of them are with me right now.

Joey!

Rob!

Jordan!

Joey!

Rob! Jordan!

Where are you guys?

- Davey! - Davey!

I kind of stop to look around,

and a few of the guys are pretty close to me.

Davey, where are you, man?

I'm here!

Davey!

Is it still out there?

At this point, everyone's pretty much freaking out.

You know, what could that have possibly been?

What a strange experience,

and we're kind of talking through it.

- It's got to be Chris. - It has to be him.

Everybody's saying, "You know what? Man, we're idiots."

It had to be our friend Chris, the R.A."

Like, that's what it had to have been.

Like, he set us up.

You know what?

I'm going call him.

I bet we'll hear his cell in the woods.

And the first thing we do is we call the R.A., Chris,

and we say, "Just, like, tell us it was you."

Hey, Chris? It's Davey.

Just, like... just, like, tell us it was you, man.

And he says, "Well, what are you talking about?"

And I'm like, "Chris, just tell us it was you, man."

Like, you know, we were in the park."

And he says, "I'm at a restaurant, guys.

Like, I don't know what you're talking about."

Chris is in a restaurant.

I could hear it in the background.

It's just a prank, man, and all of y'all are falling for it.

There's no way he could organize all this.

That's it. I'm out of here!

There's something evil here, man.

Everybody's freaking out.

If it was somebody playing a prank on us,

then they brought, like, studio-level recording equipment

into this park without anybody seeing it,

and it was the loudest thing I've ever experienced.

We all start walking back.

There it is.

I can hear the creek.

Come on.

Davey?

Davey!

Guys, come back!

At that time, one of the guys who was at the back,

he says to me,

"Hey, Davey, will you bring back the flashlight?"

- Come back, Davey! - What is it?

- What's wrong? - My torch won't light up, man.

As soon as I hand him the flashlight,

there was this, like, circle of noise around us.

The sound was, like, immediately just right back behind us.

- Where is it? - I don't know, man!

At that point, you're just terrified

because you're being physically threatened.

Where is it?

It's coming from everywhere, man! I don't know!

There was two sounds coming from whatever at once.

It's getting in my eyes!

The sounds that were coming out, whatever it was,

I mean, it, like, it physically shook you.

It was so loud.

It was this force, like, trying to remove us.

It felt like a wind pushing you out.

Run!

We're dead sprinting, and we're running,

and we're running, and we're running.

- Davey! - Jordan?

This time, though, it wasn't just this noise

that we escaped from.

It was, like, following us.

Go! Go!

It's right behind us!

You could feel. Like, you could feel and hear sticks,

like, not on the trail,

on either side of you on the trail breaking,

limbs breaking, these cracks and pops and stuff like that.

This thing, it's chasing you,

whatever it was.

We had already ran, you know, four minutes or whatever.

We run another four minutes.

We cross the bridge across the creek.

You guys still see it?

- Is it gone? - What the hell was that?

What is happening right now?

I've helped with concerts,

heard, like, a lot of loud noises,

and this, to this day, is, by far,

the loudest thing that I have ever experienced.

I mean, like, it physically shook you.

No one saw anything.

There wasn't anything there.

There was no physical thing that was there.

We had four pretty good flashlights, and...

There was not... there was nothing physical there.

I am extremely confident of that.

- Come on. Let's get out of here! - Let's go!

We hop in the car, and we fling back to campus.

Let's go!

Davey, come on, man!

We go back to campus.

You move on.

It was just this weird thing that happened to everybody.

I did go back to the park.

It was just spring, and it was a nice day,

and, I mean, I was driving that way.

And I thought, "Well, whatever. Let's just go back there."

- What's the hurry? - What?

You know about this place, never heard any of the stories?

No, I haven't, but something really weird happened to me

and some buddies here a while back,

and we just got the hell out of here.

That happened to you up here in these woods?

Yes, sir.

I don't think I'd be coming back here.

I told them, you know, the story, and they were like,

"Man, that's, like, a crazy story."

And they said, "There's a demonic cult

that is apparently, like, holding sessions there."

And I was just like, "Well, that is so weird.

That's, like, a very unsettling thing."

And they were like, "Just don't go there at night."

Yeah. I figured I ought to come back

and see what I could find out.

Don't suppose you fellas want to join me?

Oh, no. Sorry, man. Good luck.

That kind of raised the, like, risk level.

Made me even more interested.

I thought, "Let's walk back there

and figure out what it was."

I get near the end of the trail,

and I'm kind of like, "Yeah. Like, this is it."

Get up to this clearing, and...

It looks very much the same.

This weird metal fence is still there.

There was, like, some weird symbols.

That's pretty... That's just strange.

I will never know if there was actually a satanic cult

that met there or not,

but I do know the experience that I had there.

And when you hear that,

"Oh, this thing has been happening there,"

in addition to the freaked-out story that I had,

I mean, it kind of just gives you the heebie-jeebies.

I had clearly attached demonic to that experience

that I had had.

It was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Yeah. I was terrified.

It was the most scared I've ever been in my whole life.