“This was years ago, when I was a much younger lass in my twenties. I lived right by a forest that had a bunch of hiking trails through it, and I loved to take my dog for a walk there at night to look at the stars, listen to the river, get wicked baked, etc. You could expect other people there, it was a park after all, but usually it was pretty empty.

So for reference, I was about 100lbs soaking wet and my dog was a 10lb Mini Pin, so not exactly a threat to anyone. I also didn’t have my cell on me because I was dumb. It was about 11pm on a warm Tuesday night and we were just lazing in one of the little alcoves by the riverbank I like to rest at and enjoy the fireflies and whatnot. Then all of a sudden I hear this horrible scream. My dog starts barking like crazy and I freak out, but then I think ‘that was probably a rabbit’ because they scream like creepily human-like. My dog calms down and I go back to stargazing and then the scream happens again but louder. And then twice more.

My dog is growling and trying to hide behind me and then I hear this noise like a TRex is running through the forest - big loud stomps and branches breaking and shit. So now I think a girl is being chased and I feel awful because I don’t have my cell on me. It gets closer and my dog and I just hunker down hoping we can’t be seen from the path and I can see one of the trees above us shake. It felt like that scene from LOTR with the hobbits under the tree roots. The noise and stomping go right past me but I don’t see anything on the path. I stay there for a while, don’t hear anything else and eventually go home. There’s a lot of broken branches on the path and it smelled like wood smoke, but no other clues.

If my dog hadn’t been there being so visibly freaked out, I would assume it was a dream. She would never go down that specific path again either.”

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.