September 5, 2007

Hell Hound

Rate this encounter:[an error occurred while processing this directive] SammyTerry, Hazard, Kentucky, Early 1930s

My aunt Zella, who was really religious and had no reason to make this up, told me of this time when she was just a little girl of about 6 years old. They were a poor coal mining family living in the hills of Kentucky in a small home with an outhouse in the backyard. There was this one time late at night/early morning when she woke up needing to potty. She walked through the living room to get to the kitchen back door and in the main room in front of the fireplace lying there was what she thought was a dog. The "dog" watched her as she hurried across the room to go out. This only startled her at first because they didn't have a house dog. Thinking she just imagined it in the dim light, she finished her potty and this time slowly walked through so she might see it better... well, she then wished she didn't.

The "dog" was still there in front of the fireplace (that wasn't lit). She said its body looked like a hound dog or something like that, but its face was almost human-like and it had what she thought might be small horns on its forehead above its eyes. It did have a long dog-like snout that she swears was grinning at her with its long fangs showing while its devil-like tail was slowly wagging.

She was paralyzed with fear until she let out a scream and was finally able to run back to bed which she had to share with her younger brothers. She tried to wake them but they wouldn't wake up. She stayed under the covers between the two and finally fell back to sleep. Many days later she told them about it and of course they laughed and said she just had a bad dream -- after all, she was only about 6 or 7 years old when it happened and it was hard for her to explain it with that much detail at that age. But she swore that it was real and she could never forget what she saw that night. It was a long time before she would go to the outhouse at night by herself again.

This was just the first of many terrifying incidents her family would experience.