Just Creepy: Scary Stories - Scary Skinwalker Stories That Will Keep You Up Tonight

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Scary Skinwalker Stories That Will Keep You Up TonightLinktree: https://linktr.ee/its_just_creepyStory Credits:►Sent in to https://www.justcreepy.net/Timestamps:00:00 Intro00:00:18 Story 100:30:02 Story 2Music by:►'Decoherence' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.auBusiness inquiries:►[e-mail]#scarystories #horrorstories💀As always, thanks for watching! 💀

I'm 19, and I already know how this is going to sound to some people. I know there are going to be people listening who think I'm exaggerating, or that I got scared by some animal and turned it into something bigger in my head. I get that. I used to be the same way. I listened to stories like this all the time and thought I knew exactly what I would do. I'd say I would stay calm, call for help, not look where I wasn't supposed to look, and not run unless I had to.

But that was before I understood what fear actually does to you when it's not on a screen or in a story. Real fear doesn't feel cool or cinematic. It makes you stupid. It makes you freeze when you should move. And it makes you look when every part of you knows you shouldn't. This happened last summer while I was staying with my aunt and uncle near the New Mexico-Arizona line. I'm not going to name the town because my family still lives out there, and I don't want anyone trying to find the place or asking them about it.

It wasn't some abandoned ghost town or anything like that. It was just a rural property outside a small community, with a few houses spread far apart, dirt roads, old fence lines, dogs barking at nothing, and a lot of open land that looked harmless in daylight, and completely different once the sun went down. My uncle had a small place with animals, a garden, sheds, a chicken pen, and an irrigation ditch that ran along the back edge of the property. During the day, the ditch didn't look scary at all.

It was just muddy water, weeds, old pieces of pipe, and that stale wet smell that hangs around places where water sits too long. I had walked by it plenty of times before anything happened. I had even joked about how ugly it was, because my aunt had all these flowers and vegetables near the house, and then the back part of the land looked like a junkyard mixed with a swamp. I was staying there because I had just finished my first year at Community College, and didn't really know what I was doing with my life.

My mom thought it would be good for me to get away for a while, help family, and make some money instead of sitting around at home all summer. My cousin Jonah was 21 and still lived there. He was the one I mostly worked with. He wasn't loud or funny in the way some people are, but once you got used to him, he was easy to be around. He didn't talk just to fill silence. He would show me how to fix something, correct me when I was used to me

Correct me when I messed up, then move on without making a big deal out of it. The first few days were normal. We fixed fencing, moved feedbags, cleaned out part of a shed, and checked the irrigation line because my uncle said it had been acting up. I didn't know anything about irrigation, so my job was mostly carrying tools, holding the flashlight, and trying not to look completely useless. Jonah knew what he was doing, and I tried to follow his lead. on the fourth night we were eating outside because the house was still hot from the day my aunt had made beans tortillas and chicken and we were all sitting at this old metal patio table near the back door the sky was that orange purple color it gets out there right after sunset and for a while everything felt normal in a way i still think about my aunt's dogs were lying under the table my uncle was tired but joking around jonah was eating fast like

like he always did. Nothing felt wrong yet. Then my uncle looked past the yard toward the back fence and stopped talking. He stood up, squinted, and said the line was backing up again. I turned around and looked, but I didn't really see what he saw. The back edge of the property was already going dark, and all I could make out was a wet shine in the dirt near the ditch.

Jonah stood up right away and walked a few steps out into the yard. He watched it for a second, then said he should clear it. before the bank washed out. My aunt said, Not tonight. She said it so fast that everyone got quiet. Jonah didn't look at her. He just said,

It'll be quick. My aunt's face changed. It wasn't fear exactly. It was more like she was tired of having the same argument. She looked at my uncle, then at Jonah, then finally at me. She said,

You go with him. That caught me off guard. I laughed a little because I thought she meant Jonah needed help holding the light or something. Nobody laughed with me. My uncle told Jonah to take the big flashlight, the shovel, the pipe wrench, and the pistol from the mudroom. I remember just sitting there with a tortilla in my hand, looking from one person to the next.

I wasn't raised around guns the way they were. I'd seen them before, but I wasn't casual about them. Jonah acted like that was a normal thing to bring for a clogged ditch. He went inside, and I followed, because I didn't want to seem scared in front of the moment. front of everyone. In the mudroom, Jonah grabbed the flashlight and tools. Then he took a small black pistol from a high shelf and checked it before putting it in a holster on his belt. I asked if that was for snakes. He said, sometimes. I asked what else it was for. He didn't answer right away. He just looked at me for a second, then handed me the flashlight. Stay close, he said. And if I tell you not to look

at something, don't look. I thought he was trying to scare me, so I said something dumb like, what, are we going monster hunting? He turned toward me so quickly I shut up. Don't talk like that out here, he said. That was when I started feeling uneasy, not terrified yet, just aware that everybody else knew something I didn't. I didn't want to ask too many questions, because I didn't want Jonah to think I was weak, but I also didn't like the way he kept checking the windows before we went out. We left the house right as the last light was draining out of the sky. The dogs started to follow us at first, but they stopped near the chicken pen. That bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Those dogs followed Jonah everywhere during the day. They barked at trucks, lizards, birds,

trash bags blowing across the yard, basically anything. But that night, they stopped at the edge of the open yard and watched us go like they had hit an invisible. fence. Jonah noticed too. He told them to go back. They did, fast. The ditch was beyond the last fence line, down a slight slope through knee-high weeds and dry grass. The water sounded wrong before we even reached it. Usually it moved in a quiet, steady way, but that night it had a thick, uneven gurgle to it like it was being forced through a block drain. There was also a smell I didn't like. The ditch always smelled muddy, but this had something else. in it. Rotten meat maybe, or wet hair left somewhere too long. We found the blockage maybe

200 feet from the house. A bunch of tumbleweed, plastic sheeting, branches, and old trash had wedged against a metal grate where the ditch narrowed. Water was backing up and spilling over one side, eating into the bank. Jonah set the shovel down and told me to keep the flashlight on the grate while he worked. For a little while, everything seemed normal enough. He pulled out branches, cursed under his breath, and used the pipe wrench to loosen part of the bent metal. I stood there with the flashlight and tried not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. I remember being annoyed more than scared. I kept thinking we were going to finish, go back, wash up, and my aunt would be mad for no reason. Then we heard a woman crying. It came from farther

down the ditch, somewhere past the weeds and the bend in the waterline. At first I thought it was an animal. I had heard foxes and goats and even cats make sounds that seemed human at first. But this was different. This sounded like a woman trying to cry quietly and failing. It had that broken, choking sound people make when they don't want anyone to hear them. I lifted the flashlight toward the sound. Jonah caught my wrist so hard it hurt. Don't, he said. I looked at him. His face had gone flat and pale in the beam bouncing off the mud. He was not looking toward the crying. He was looking at the ground in front of him like he was forcing himself to keep his eyes there.

I whispered, someone's down there. He said, no. The crying came again. This time there were words mixed in, but I couldn't understand them. It was like someone was sobbing into water. The sound rose and fell, then broke into little gasps. I tried to pull my wrist loose, but Jonah held on. What if somebody fell?

I whispered. He turned just a nose. enough to look at me. Do not answer it, he said. Do not say anything to it. That made no sense to me. If there was a woman hurt in the ditch, we couldn't just walk away. That was what my brain kept holding on to. I knew Jonah was scared. I knew the dogs had acted weird. I knew my aunt had warned us, but I was 19 and stupid enough to think the right thing was always obvious. A woman was crying. We were nearby. We had a flashlight. It felt wrong not to help. Then the voice said Jonah's name.

Jonah. It sounded weak, like whoever said it was in pain. Jonah closed his eyes for half a second. His hand moved toward the pistol under his shirt, but he didn't pull it out yet. The voice said his name again. Jonah, please. I felt cold all at once. The night around us seemed too open, too quiet.

The water still gurgled at our feet, but everything else had gone still. I whispered, how does she know you? Jonah said, it listens. That was the first thing he said that really scared me. The crying stopped. For several seconds there was only the backed up water in my own breathing. Jonah let go of my wrist, but only because he needed both hands. He drew the pistol and held it low, pointed at the ground.

Start backing up, he said. I didn't move. I couldn't. I kept staring toward the bend in the ditch, even though I couldn't see anything except weeds and dark water. Then the voice came again, closer than before. I'm stuck. It sounded so human that I broke.

I lifted the flashlight before Jonah could stop me. The beam swung down the ditch and caught something crouched in the water about 30 yards away. At first my mind didn't understand what I was seeing. I think that is the most honest way to explain it. It wasn't like seeing a monster and instantly knowing it was a monster. It was like looking at something your brain had no file for. The top half looked almost like a person. but too thin. Long black hair hung over its head and shoulders in wet ropes. Its arms were folded

close to its chest, with elbows angled wrong. Its skin looked gray in the light, slick in places, like mud had dried and cracked over it. Below the waist it had deer legs, thin dark legs with joints bending the wrong way for anything human. Hooves stood in the shallow water, half-sunk in mud. I saw one of them shift and the movement was so smooth. an animal-like that my body finally understood danger before my brain did. The head lifted. The hair slid just enough for me to see two yellow eyes staring back at us. They were not just reflecting the flashlight. They looked lit from behind, bright yellow, steady, and too focused. A deer's eyes should be on the sides of its head. These looked forward enough to make me feel like a person was

inside there, watching. I made a sound I wish I could forget, not a scream. More like like my body trying to reject what I was seeing. Jonah shoved the flashlight down. The beam hit the mud between us. He stepped in front of me and raised the pistol. The thing in the ditch kept crying, but now that I had seen it, the crying sounded fake. Not completely fake. That was the bad part.

It still sounded like a woman, but there was something underneath it, a dry, grinding sound like teeth working together behind the sobs. up, Jonah said. We started backing away. The thing said in Jonah's voice, stay close. I stopped. It said it again. Stay close. Same words. Same tone he had used in the mud room. Jonah whispered, keep moving. We backed up another few steps. Then it spoke in my voice. What? Are we going monster hunting? My legs went weak. I had said that inside the house. Not loudly, not outside, not near the ditch. Hearing it come from that thing made me feel like the world had tilted. I suddenly understood what Jonah meant by, it listens, and I hated that I understood.

The water shifted. Something moved through it. Jonah said, Run when I tell you, I was already halfway there mentally. I could feel every muscle in my body waiting for permission. The flashlight shook in my hand so badly the beam bounced over the dirt, the weeds, Jonah's boots, and the edge of the ditch. The thing spoke again, using my aunt's voice. Not tonight.

That was all Jonah needed. Go, he said. We ran. I don't remember starting. One second we were backing away, and the next I was crashing through weeds with Jonah beside me, holding the flashlight like it was the only thing keeping the dark from closing around us. I could hear the thing behind us coming out of the water. It made a wet, heavy sound first, then the sharper sound of hooves hitting drier ground.

It was fast. Not deer fast exactly. Not smooth like an animal built to run. It was uneven, but the unevenness made it worse, because it sounded like its body kept changing the way it moved. Sometimes there were four points hitting the ground. Sometimes too. Sometimes it dragged something for a second and then lurched forward so quickly I thought it was right behind me.

The voices followed us too. My voice. Someone's down there. Jonah's voice. Back up. My aunt's voice. You go with him. Then a voice I didn't know, low and rough, breathing out words I couldn't understand. We were halfway to the gate when my foot caught in a loop of old wire hidden in the weeds.

I went down hard. My shoulder hit first, then my knee, then my face. The flashlight flew out of my hand and rolled sideways, throwing a flat strip of light across the ground. Jonah turned back and grabbed me under the arm. He pulled so hard pain shot through my shoulder. Get up, he said. I tried. My knee felt like it had been split open. I looked past him and saw the thing at the edge of the flashlight beam. It was closer than I thought.

The light hit its legs first. Those thin deer legs slick with mud, bending and straightening under a body that looked too tall in the front. Then the beam caught the hanging hair. The head was low, but the eyes were raised, shining out from behind the black strands. I saw a part of a mouth. pale lips maybe, or skin pulled back from teeth.

It looked too wide. Jonah fired into the dirt in front of it. The gunshot cracked across the ditch and bounced off the hills. My ears rang instantly. The thing stopped. It did not jump away. It did not run. It just stopped moving and tilted its head.

Then it opened its mouth and made the sound of the gunshot back at us. Not perfectly. That would have almost been less awful. It made a sharp, cracked version of it. too wet and too close to a voice. Then it made it again, and again, each time less like a gun, and more like a mouth trying to learn the sound. Jonah pulled me up and dragged me toward the gate.

I barely remember the next few seconds. My knee was bleeding. My lungs burned. My ears were ringing. We reached the gate and shoved through it so hard the metal rattled against the post. Jonah latched it behind us. Even though I think both of us knew it wouldn't stop that thing if it wanted. wanted to follow. It was just something to put between us and the ditch. The house looked too far

away. My aunt was standing in the doorway now, and my uncle was behind her with a rifle. The dogs were at her feet, but they would not come off the porch. They were whining with their heads low, like they wanted to run and hide but didn't want to leave her. Behind us, the thing called my name, not Evan the way a person says it. It stretched it out, testing it. Evan. I didn't around. Jonah shoved me forward. We ran the last part to the house. I fell on the porch steps because my knee gave out, and my uncle grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me inside. Jonah came in behind me, breathing hard, pistol still in his hand. My aunt shut the door and locked it. My uncle moved everyone away from the windows and told us to get low. Nobody asked questions

right away. That was how I knew they already had some idea. My aunt checked my knee and my face while my uncle stared toward the back of the property through a thin gap in the curtain. Jonah kept saying, it was at the ditch, over and over, like if he said it enough times it would make sense. My uncle asked what we saw. Jonah said, hair, deer legs, eyes. My aunt started crying silently. That scared me almost as much as what was outside, because my aunt was not someone who cried easily. She was the kind of person who killed spiders with her bare hand and yelled at grown men when they parked wrong near her gate. Seeing her cry without making a sound made me understand that this was not the first time something like this had been near their land. My uncle told

us to stay away from every window. He called someone. I don't know if it was a neighbor first or the police first. I remember him saying there was an animal near the house, then pausing, then saying maybe a person. He did not try to explain more than that. The thing did not come to the door like I expected. That almost made it worse. It stayed out in the dark and moved around the house where we couldn't see it. We heard weeds flattened near the side yard. We heard something brush against the chicken pen. The chickens went completely silent, which I didn't even know chickens could do. Then there was a long scraping sound along the side of the shed, slow enough that I pictured it dragging one hand or one antler or one hoof across the metal as it passed. The dogs backed into the

hallway and stayed there. Then the voices started again. My voice came from somewhere beyond the kitchen window. What if somebody fell? Jonah put both hands over his ears. My aunt whispered, Don't repeat it. Don't let it make you repeat it. The voice used Jonah next. Hand me that. That was something he had said to me all week while we worked. It came from the dark near the shed, then from farther left near the chicken pen, then from somewhere closer to the house. The sound was not moving like a person walking. It would be in one place, then another, with almost no time between. I kept trying to make it make sense and couldn't. My uncle turned off the lights one by one until only the small hallway light was on. He said light near the windows made us easier to see.

The house became a box of shadows. We all moved into the living room and sat low against the inner wall, away from the glass. I could smell blood from my knee and mud from my shoes. My hands were shaking so badly that my fingers kept hitting the floor. Then my phone buzzed in my pocket. I almost threw it. The screen showed a text from a number I didn't know. It said, Come back to the water.

I stared at it for so long the letters started looking unreal. Another text came in. Jonah left the tools. I showed Jonah. His face went gray. We had left the shovel and pipe wrench by the grate. There was no reason anyone texting me should know that. My aunt grabbed my phone and turned it off. Don't read anything else, she said. I wanted to ask how

a thing outside could send texts. I wanted to say that proved it had to be a person. But none of us said that because none of us believed it. Not really. Something climbed onto the roof. It started above the kitchen, heavy enough to make the ceiling creak. Then it moved across the metal roofing in short, uneven bursts. It wasn't running. It was creeping. There were long pauses between each movement, and during those pauses the house felt like it was holding its breath with us. My uncle lifted the rifle toward the ceiling, then lowered it. He looked angry, helpless, and scared all at once. My aunt told us to get into the bathroom. It was the only room in the center of the house with no windows. We all crowded inside, including the dogs. My uncle

stood by the door with the rifle. Jonah sat on the edge of the tub with the pistol in his lap. My aunt sat on the floor with both dogs pressed against her. I sat beside the sink, holding my knee, feeling like a little kid even though I was trying not to act like one. Above us the thing moved again. Slow scrape. Pause. Another scrape. Then the crying started directly over the bathroom. A woman crying into the ceiling.

I put my hands over my ears, but it didn't help. The sound seemed to come through the walls and the floor. It was soft, miserable, and close. Every part of me wanted it to stop. And under that crying, I heard the same dry grinding sound from the ditch. My aunt whispered a prayer. The crying changed into my voice. What if somebody fell?

I squeezed my eyes shut. It said it again. What if somebody fell? Jonah whispered, I'm sorry. I don't know who he was saying it to. Maybe me. Maybe his parents. Maybe whatever was outside.

His voice sounded broken. Then, far away, we heard sirens. At first I thought I imagined them. They were faint, barely there under the sound on the roof. But then they grew louder. Real sirens. Real people coming up the road. The thing above us went silent.

The sirens got closer. The dogs lifted their heads but didn't bark. My uncle held up one hand, telling us not to move yet. Then something crossed the roof so fast it sounded like more than one body. The metal shook. There was a heavy image. impact outside, then the sound of hooves tearing across the yard toward the back fence. It faded toward the ditch, and then it was gone. We still didn't leave the bathroom until a deputy

called my uncle's name from outside. Even then, my uncle made us wait while he moved through the house first. When he finally told us to come out, the place looked the same at first. That was one of the strangest parts. Inside, nothing was destroyed. No windows broken. No windows broken. No. doors open. The house looked almost normal except for the furniture moved away from the windows, and all of us looking like we'd aged ten years in an hour. Outside was different. There were wet hoof prints on the porch and in the dirt around the house. Not shoe prints, not dog tracks, hoof prints. They went from the yard to the porch, across the side of the house, around near the kitchen window, then toward the back. There were long dark streaks on the siding, like something

wet had dragged along it. The deputy's shined lights on the ground and didn't say much. One of them asked if any livestock had gotten loose. My uncle said no. The deputy looked toward the ditch and said, Deer? My uncle didn't answer. They followed the tracks with flashlights. Near the house, they looked like deer tracks. Closer to the back fence, they changed. I know how that sounds, but I saw it. Some marks were still hooves. Others looked like something had pressed long fingers into the mud, not human fingers exactly, too long and too narrow, like hands that were almost hands, but not right. The deputies searched near the ditch, but they did not find a person. The tools were still by the grate. The water had gone down because Jonah had cleared enough of the blockage

before everything happened. The shovel was lying on the bank. The pipe wrench was half sunk in the mud. They did find hair caught in the metal grate, long black hair, a lot of it. One of One deputy reached for it with gloves, but my aunt told him to leave it. Her voice came out sharp and everyone looked at her. She said, don't bring that near the house. The deputy looked annoyed for a second, but he left it there. After the deputies finished taking their report, they told my uncle it might have been an injured animal, maybe someone messing around, maybe kids trying to scare us.

They didn't sound convinced, and we didn't either. Nobody could explain the voices. Nobody could explain the texts. Nobody could explain how something with deer tracks had been on the roof. They left sometime after two in the morning. None of us slept. My aunt burned cedar and moved through the house quietly. I'm not going to pretend I understood everything she did.

It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't like a movie. It was just serious. Everyone stayed quiet while she did it. Afterward, my uncle told Jonah and me to sit at the kitchen table and tell him everything from the beginning. Jonah talked more than I did. I kept getting stuck on certain parts, the crying, the legs, the way it used my voice, the yellow eyes watching from behind the hair. When Jonah got to the part where I lifted the flashlight after he told me not to, I expected my uncle to yell at me.

He didn't. He just rubbed his face and looked exhausted. That's what it wanted, he said. I asked what it was. For a long time nobody answered. Finally, my answer. said, something that waits for people to feel sorry for it. That sentence has stayed with me more than anything else she said. The next morning my uncle and two older men came to the property and went down to the ditch. Jonah and I were not allowed to go with them. We watched from the porch while they worked. They cleared the rest of the blockage, removed the grate, burned the hair and trash in a metal barrel, and walked the ditch line for a long time. One of the men marked something in the dirt with his boot, then covered it back up before they returned. Later, Jonah told me the man

warned him not to repeat the voices it used. I realized I had already been doing that without thinking. All morning, while trying to explain what happened, I kept saying the phrases out loud. What if somebody fell? Come back to the water. Jonah left the tools. I stopped after Jonah told me. I don't know if it mattered, but I stopped. I went home two days later. My mom drove. My mom, drove out and picked me up because I didn't want to stay another night and nobody blamed me. My knee was swollen, my shoulder hurt, and I was embarrassed by how scared I still felt in daylight. Before I left, Jonah walked me to the car. He told me not to talk about it at night.

I asked why. He said, because things like that follow attention. I wanted to laugh because it sounded like something from an old superstition, but I couldn't, not after what I had seen. On the drive home, I fell asleep for maybe 20 minutes. When I woke up, my phone was on my lap. I was sure it had been off. The screen was lit and there was a draft message open to Jonah.

It said, I'm still at the water. I did not type that. My mom was driving. Nobody else was in the car. I deleted it and powered the phone off. A week later, Jonah called me from a different number. He said he had found the flashlight I dropped by the ditch. That didn't make sense because my uncle had picked it up the night after everything happened.

Jonah said this one was sitting upright on the bank, clean, facing the water. He said it turned on by itself when he got close. I asked what he did with it. He said he burned it. After that we didn't talk about the ditch again. My aunt and uncle still live there, but they put more lights up, fixed the fence, and stopped letting anyone go near the back part of the property after sunset. My aunt told my mom the dog still won't pass the chicken pen at night, not even for food.

I know people will try to explain this away. I've tried too. I've thought about a prank, an injured animal, a person in some kind of costume, stress, darkness, fear, all of it. But none of that explains what we saw in the water. None of it explains the deer legs, the hair in the grate, the hoof prints on the porch, or my own voice coming from something that should not have known what I said inside the house. I'm not saying I know exactly what it was. I'm not saying I know the right name for it.

I only know there was something in that ditch, and it knew how to sound helpless. It knew how to sound like us. It knew how to make you feel guilty for not helping. That is what scares me the most now. Not that it chased us. Not that it got onto the roof. Not even that it used my voice.

What scares me is that if Jonah hadn't been there, I would have walked right toward it. I would have shined the light into the water, called out to it, and tried to help. And I don't think I would have come back. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMDM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager.

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recommended probiotic yogurt brand. Choose Activia. Feel good from the inside out. Visit Activia.ca for more details. I'm not going to use my real name and I'm not going to say exactly where this happened, but I'll say it was in northern Arizona on BLM land south of the Navajo Nation about 10 months ago. I sat on this for a while because I didn't want to think about it. And honestly, writing it down right now is the first time I've gone through the whole thing start to finish. I'm 21. I work construction part time and I'm taking classes at community college. I live with my mom and my younger sister in a house in North Phoenix. I've been camping since I was a little kid because my dad used to take me before he left. And once I got my own truck at 19, I started going

out by myself a lot. It's the only thing that actually helps when I can't stop thinking. The truck is a 2008 Toyota Tacoma. It has a 192,000 miles on it, and the AC works about half the time. I bought it off a guy in Mesa for $4,000. Cash. The summer. I turn 19. The other thing you need to know about is my dog. His name is Cooper. He's a blue healer mix, mostly healer, but with something else in there, probably some kind of cattle dog or maybe a little pit. He's about four years old and I've had him since he was a puppy. My mom got him from a shelter for my 18th birthday, and I'm not going to lie. I cried when she handed him to me. He's the best thing in my life. That's not me being dramatic. He sleeps on my bed every night.

He comes everywhere with me. He's smarter than most people I know. So, last August. I had a long weekend off from work, and the temperature was finally dropping a little at night out in the high desert. I told my mom I was going camping for two nights, and I'd be back Sunday afternoon. I packed up the truck with my usual stuff.

Tent, sleeping bag, two coolers, propane stove, a folding chair, a hatchet, my rifle, about 12 gallons of water, dog food, and a duffel bag of clothes. Cooper jumped in the passenger seat the second he saw me grab his collar. I left Phoenix around two in the afternoon. I didn't have a specific spot in mind. I just knew I wanted to be far from anyone.

I drove up the I-17 toward Flagstaff and then cut east on the I-40. And after about 40 minutes, I got off and started heading north on a state highway. I'm not going to name it. I drove for another hour and a half, and the country opened up into that big empty red and brown stretch you get out there. No towns, no gas stations, just sagebrush and rock and the occasional cattle gate. Around six in the evening, I turned off onto a dirt road I'd been on once before. It runs about 11 miles back into BLM land before it dead ends at an old stock pond. There's no service back there. I knew that going in. I always tell my mom my general

direction and a return time, and that's about all you can do. I drove maybe nine miles down. I drove maybe nine miles down the dirt road, and then I pulled off onto a side track I hadn't taken before. It went up a small rise and around behind a cluster of junipers. There was an old fire ring already built, blackened stones in a circle, with charcoal and bones in the middle, probably hunters. I parked the truck and got out, and Cooper jumped down and immediately started sniffing every single rock in a 10-foot radius. I set up the tent before the sun went down.

I keep my setup pretty simple. a two-person tent, a foam pad, a 30-degree bag, and a small lantern that hangs from a hook in the middle. I built the fire up in the old ring. I had some firewood in the bed of the truck because you can't always count on finding good wood out there. I cooked a couple of hot dogs on a stick for dinner and gave Cooper his food in his collapsible bowl. He ate it fast, and then he sat down next to my chair and leaned against my leg. That's a thing he does. He sits next to me and presses his whole side into my calf. It's how he says hi, basically. The sun went down around 7.45. The temperature dropped fast out there. I had on a hoodie and I was still cold. The stars came out

and there were no clouds and no moon yet. And I'm telling you, I've seen the Milky Way out there a hundred times, and it still gets me every single time. There was no wind. It was completely quiet. Just the fire crackling and once in a while a coyote way off in the distance, and Cooper would lift his head up and listen for a second, and then put it back down on his paws. I sat there with my dog for probably two hours just watching the fire. I was thinking about my classes, about a girl I had been talking to who had stopped texting me back the week before. about whether I should ask for more hours at work. Normal stuff.

I had one beer. I don't drink a lot when I camp alone because if something happens, you need to be able to drive out. That's a rule my dad taught me before he left. I think it was around 10 when Cooper sat up. He'd been lying on his side asleep, and then his head came up and his ears went forward,

and he was staring out into the dark. I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything either. I said, what is it, buddy? and reached down to scratch his head, and he ignored me. That's not normal for him. He always at least flicks his tail when I talk to him. He stood up.

The hair on his back came up, all the way from his shoulders to the base of his tail. He took two steps away from the fire, and then he stopped and looked back at me. His eyes caught the firelight and shone green. He stared at me for maybe three seconds, and then he turned back to the dark and started walking out into it. I called his name. I said, Cooper, come here, kind of firm, but not yelling. He didn't stop. He walked maybe 10 feet, and then he broke into a trot, and then a full run. I jumped up out of my chair and grabbed my flashlight off the cooler and ran a few steps after him, but he was already gone. The light from my fire only reaches about 15 feet, and after that it's just total black.

I stood there at the edge of the firelight, and I called him over and over for like 20 minutes. Cooper, Cooper, come on, buddy, nothing. I could hear him running, sort of, for the first minute or so, just the sound of pause hitting hard ground, and then nothing. The desert was completely quiet again. I'm not going to act like I wasn't worried, I was, but Cooper has chased things before. He's chased rabbits and once a jackrabbit and once a coyote that came too close to camp at our spot near Sedona. He always comes back, usually within 10 or 15 minutes, panting, tongue out, looking pleased with himself. I waited. I sat back down in my chair and I waited. I kept my flashlight in my lap. I called for him every couple of minutes. The fire burned down a little

and I threw another log on it. I kept telling myself he was fine. He was fine. He'd be back. An hour passed. I'm not making that up. I watched the time on my phone, which had no service. but still tells time. I had been calling him for an hour, and he hadn't come back. I'd never had him gone that long before. I started walking the edge of camp with my flashlight, sweeping it out into the dark and yelling for him. I went maybe 30 feet out in each direction and then came back. I didn't want to get lost myself. The thing about being out there at night is that everything looks the same. You can lose your camp in like four steps if you're not careful. Another hour. It was getting close to midnight.

I had been alone at that fire for almost two hours, and my dog was somewhere out there, and I was starting to actually panic. I kept picturing him caught in a snare, or hit by something, or stuck in a hole. I'd seen videos of dogs getting bit by rattlesnakes and dying within an hour. He'd never been bit by one, and I didn't know what I would do if he was somewhere out there dying alone.

I decided I'd give him until one in the morning, and if he wasn't back by then I'd drive the truck out slow with the headlights on and look for him along the road. At 1247 I saw him. I was sitting in my chair facing the fire when something at the edge of my vision made me look up. He was standing about 30 feet out from the fire, just at the very edge of where the light reached. I could see his outline against the dark, his silver and black coat and the shape of his ears and the white patch on his chest.

I almost cried, I'm not going to lie. I shot up out of the chair and I said, Cooper, buddy, come here. I held my hand out and slapped my thigh, which is the signal he knows. He didn't come. He just stood there. He was facing me directly.

I could see his eyes catching the firelight. They were green and they were pointed at me and they were not moving. I said his name again. Cooper, come on, buddy, come here. He didn't move. He didn't take a step. He didn't wag his tail. He didn't tilt his head, which he always does when I talk to him.

He just stood there at the edge of the light, looking right at me. I grabbed my flashlight and I clicked it on and pointed it at him. The beam hit him and he didn't flinch. Cooper hates flashlights in his eyes. He always squints and turns his head. This dog didn't. I'm going to try to describe what I saw, and you're going to have to bear with me because it's hard. From the chest down, he looked completely normal.

same coat, same legs, same paws. His tail was hanging straight down behind him, not curled up the way Cooper carries his. Cooper has this curl at the end of his tail when he's relaxed, and there was no curl. The head was wrong. I couldn't tell you exactly what was wrong with it. It was Cooper's head. The shape was right. The markings were right. The ears were right. But it was off in some way I couldn't name. Wrong in a way I could feel in my chest before my eyes caught up, and he wasn't blinking. I stood there for probably 45 seconds with the flashlight on him, and he didn't blink, not once. I said, Cooper, come, one more time, and I'm not exaggerating, I sounded scared. My voice cracked a little. I was talking to my dog, and my voice cracked because something in my chest

already knew. He opened his mouth. I want to be clear about this, because it's the part I keep coming back to. He didn't bark. He didn't whine. He didn't make any normal dog sound at all. His mouth opened and a voice came out, a whisper. A dry, thin person's whisper, not loud, just loud enough for me to hear it across 30 feet of open ground. It said Cooper. It said his name. In my dog's voice, sort of, but also a person's voice underneath it, scraped and quiet and wrong. It said his own name back to me. I didn't move. I don't think I breathed. I just stood there with the flashlight on him, and I waited because I didn't know what else to do.

I think part of my brain was trying to tell me I had heard it wrong, that it had been a yip or a whine, or my own ears. And then it said it again. Cooper. Same dry whisper, same flat tone. And then it tilted its head, kind of, except the head moved wrong. Cooper tilts his head smooth. This was a small, fast jerk to the side and then back.

Not a tilt, a twitch. I couldn't talk. I couldn't move. I just stood there with my hands still out in front of me, palm down, the signal I'd been giving him to come. And then, from somewhere far out in the dark behind it, past the junipers and out across the open desert, I heard a bark. It was Cooper.

I have to explain this. I know my dog's bark. I have heard my dog bark thousands of times. I know the sound of him when he's playing. I know the sound of him when he's warning. I know the sound of him when he's scared. The bark that came out of the desert was Cooper's scared bark. It was high and short and there were three of them in a row.

Then a pause. Then three more. He was calling for me. I have never felt my body do what it did in that moment. My stomach dropped and I got hot and cold at the same time. And I think I made a sound out loud just a kind of, oh, because the thing standing at the edge of my firelight was not my dog. I looked back at it.

It was still standing there. It hadn't moved when the real bark came. It was watching me. Its eyes were still on me. It hadn't blinked. Then it took a step forward. Just one step. Into the light a little bit more.

And I saw something I didn't see before, which is that its front legs were a little too long. Not by a lot. By maybe two inches. I don't know how I noticed that. I notice everything about Cooper because I look at him all the time. But the legs were wrong. The proportions were wrong. I took a step back. I bumped into my chair. I almost fell.

It took another step forward and it said, come here. In my voice. I want to tell you what I did next, but I'm not totally sure I remember it in order. I remember turning around and looking toward the truck. The truck was parked maybe 20 feet from the fire, on the other side from where the thing was standing. I remember thinking, get to the truck, get to the truck and lock the door. doors. I remember thinking about my rifle, which was in the back seat in its case. I started backing up. I didn't turn my back on it. I kept the flashlight pointed at it and I just stepped backward, one foot at a time, around the fire and toward the truck. It watched me, its head turned to

follow me. The body didn't move, but the head turned, and at one point I am almost positive the head turned further than a dog's head can turn. I'm not going to say it spun around. It didn't. But it turned more than it should have, and then it corrected itself, fast. I got to the driver's side door. I had my keys in my front pocket because I always keep them there when I'm camping. I fumbled them out without taking my eyes off it. I opened the door, I climbed in, I locked the doors. The second the door shut I heard the bark again.

Out in the dark, Cooper. Three short barks. Closer this time. He was coming toward camp. The thing at the edge of the firelight heard it too. It turned its head, fast, in the direction the bark came from. And then it did something I am going to remember until I die. It smiled.

I know dogs don't smile. I know that. Dogs can pant in a way that looks like a smile, but they don't actually smile. This thing pulled its lips back from its teeth, all the way back, and it held them there. And I could see every single tooth in its mouth lit up green by my flashing. flashlight beam. And the teeth were not all dog teeth. Some of them were, in the front. The back ones were flat, human molars in the jaw of my dog. I threw up, just a little bit, in my own mouth. I swallowed it back down because I didn't want to make any noise. The thing turned and started

walking slow in the direction of the bark. I knew what was about to happen. I knew it the way you know a stove is hot. I knew that thing was going to find. my real dog and it was going to do something to him. I started the truck. The headlights came on automatically and they swept across the desert and lit up the thing from the side. It froze. It turned its head toward me. Its body kept facing the direction it had been walking. The head was looking right at the truck. And then it ran. It ran on four legs, almost normal, almost. Its back legs came up too high, but it was fast and it was going toward where I'd heard Cooper. I slammed the truck into drive and I floored it.

I tore across that dirt clearing and I didn't care about the fire or the tent or the cooler or anything. I drove right at where I'd seen the thing run. I had the high beams on and I was scanning back and forth, looking for it, looking for it, looking for Cooper, looking for anything. The truck bounced over rocks and I almost lost a tire in a wash, but I kept going. I made it maybe 150 yards out from camp and then I had to slow down because the brush was getting thick, and I didn't want to high-center the truck on a juniper. I rolled down the window.

I put it in park, foot on the brake, and I yelled, Cooper, Cooper, come. For a second, there was nothing, and then I heard him. He was crying. It's the only word for it. He wasn't barking. He was making this high, sad wine, and it was coming from off to my left, maybe 40 yards out. I cranked the wheel and I drove toward the sound. The truck climbed up over a little berm and the headlights swept down into a shallow dip in the ground. He was there, my real Cooper. He was standing in the middle of the dip with his head low and his tail tucked all the way under his belly. He was shaking. I could see him shaking from the truck. There was blood on his side, not a lot, just a scrape. The thing was on the other side of the dip, standing there, watching him. When my headlights hit the

thing, it turned and looked at me, and in the bright white light of the high beams, I saw it without any shadow or guesswork. And I am going to tell you exactly what I saw. It had Cooper's shape. From a distance, in firelight, it could have passed for him. But up close in the headlights, the proportions were all wrong. The head was too big for the body. The legs were too long. The tail had no hair on the last third of it, just bare gray skin, and the eyes were not dog eyes. They were too round, and they were facing too far forward, and they reflected the light in a way that wasn't green. They were red. I laid on the horn.

I leaned all the way forward, and I held the horn down, and I screamed, Get away from him, as loud as I have ever screamed in my life. The thing flinched. It actually flinched. And then it opened its mouth, and it made a sound that I'm not going to be able to describe to you, but I'll try. It was high, and it was loud, and it was part scream and part laugh, and it had words in it. I couldn't make the words out, but it had words in it. And then it turned and ran. It ran on all fours up and out of the dip and away into the dark. I watched it go. The

headlights followed it for maybe 40 feet, and then it was gone, just gone, into the brush. I sat there with my foot on the brake and my hand on the horn, and I just shook. I'm 21 and I'm not afraid to tell you my teeth were chattering, and my hands were jumping on the wheel. Cooper was still standing in the dip. I put the truck in park. I left the headlights on. I left the engine running. I opened the door, and I got out, and I walked down into the dip, and I called his name.

My real voice, not the thing's version. Cooper, buddy, it's me. Come here. He looked up at me, and the second he saw me, his whole body changed. His tail came out from under his belly, and it started wagging, small at first, then big. He came running to me, and he jumped up on me, and he jumped up on me, and he, he was shaking and whining and pressing his face into my stomach. I went down on my knees and I just held him. I felt all over him. His side was scraped, not deep. He had some burrs in his fur. He had

something on his neck, which I figured out a second later was saliva, not his. It was thick, and it had a smell. I'm not going to try to describe the smell. It made me want to throw up again. I wiped it off with the corner of my shirt. I carried him to the truck. I put him in the passenger seat and I got in and I locked the doors and I sat there for probably three minutes just breathing. Cooper was in the seat next to me and he had his head in my lap and he was still shaking but he was quiet. I had one hand on him at all times. I am not going to lie. I thought about going back to the camp. My tent was still there, my cooler, my chair, my rifle, which I had not grabbed because I had been too scared to take my eyes off the thing long enough to open the case.

All of my stuff was sitting back there in the firelight, and I was thinking about driving back to get it. I did not drive back to get it. I turned the truck around in a six-point turn in that little open spot, and I drove back toward the dirt road. I drove slow because I didn't want to hit a rock and break an axle out there. The whole time I was driving, I had one hand on Cooper, the whole time. He didn't move. He just lay there with his head in my lap and his eyes open, looking up at me. I made it back to the main dirt road. I turned left to head toward the highway. I had 11 miles of dirt road ahead of me, and then I'd hit pavement. The first mile was fine. About a mile and a half in the thing came back. I saw it in my rearview mirror. The headlights were pointed forward,

but the taillights threw red back behind the truck, and in the red light I saw something running, about 30 yards back, keeping up with me. I was doing maybe 20 miles an hour because of the road. It was matching my speed and not breathing hard and not falling back. I sped up. I went up to 25, then 30. The truck started bouncing hard, Cooper braced against the seat. The thing in the mirror sped up too. It was still there, 30 yards back. I floored it. I didn't care about the rocks anymore. I didn't care about the tires. I got up to 45 on a dirt road, and the truck was rattling so hard I thought stuff was going to fall apart.

And I looked in the mirror, and the thing was still back there. Still keeping up. Still on four legs. I drove that way for what felt like an hour, but was probably ten minutes. My hands were soaked. Cooper started whining, and then I came around a bend, and the headlights hit something across the road, and I had to slam on the brakes. It was a cow, a full-grown cow, standing right in the middle of the road, just looking at me. Open range, there are cows out there.

I skidded to a stop maybe ten feet from the cow. The cow didn't move. I looked in the mirror. The thing was gone. I sat there with the truck idling, and I waited. I counted to thirty in my head. I scanned the mirrors. I scanned the sides.

I rolled down the window a crack and listened. Nothing. Just my engine and the cow breathed. I honked at the cow. It looked at me. It walked slow, off the road. I drove past it. I kept going. I never saw the thing again. Not that night anyway. I made it to the highway. Pavement felt incredible. I drove south. There was no traffic. I drove for about 40 minutes before I saw another car, a semi heading the other direction. And I almost cried just from the sight of normal headlights. I pulled into the first gas station I came to. It was a small car. It was a small car. one off the highway, attached to a convenience store, with one of those signs that says, last gas for 80 miles. The clock on the dashboard said 318 in the morning. There was one other vehicle in the lot, a beat-up red bronco. I went inside with Cooper on his leash. The guy behind the counter was Navajo, probably in his 60s, watching a small TV mounted in the corner.

He looked at me when I came in and he looked at Cooper and his face changed. He said, you're shaking. I said, I'm okay. He said, you came from up that way. He pointed back the way I had come. I said, yeah. He looked at me for a long second. Then he looked at Cooper. Then he reached under the counter and he pulled out a brown paper bag and he set it on the counter

and he said, take this. Don't open it in here. I said, what is it? He said, it's for your dog. Mix it in his food for four days. Then bury what's left. I didn't know what to say. I bought a Gatorade and a bag of beef jerky and I paid for my gas and I took the bag.

I said, thank you. He nodded. He said, don't go back up there. I said I won't. I drove home. Cooper slept the whole rest of the way. I want to tell you a few things about what happened after. I got home around 6.30 in the morning.

My mom was up making coffee. She took one look at me and asked what was wrong. And I told her I had a hard night. and I was going to bed. I slept until four in the afternoon. Cooper slept on top of my chest the whole time. I would wake up every couple of hours and look down at him and check that it was him. His tail was curled. His chest was moving. He blinked when I touched his face. He was him. I opened the paper bag from the gas station guy. Inside there was a small bundle of dried plant wrapped in cloth and a smaller bag of what looked like ash mixed with something else. There was no

label. There were no instructions other than what he told me. I mixed a pinch of it into Cooper's food for four nights in a row, and on the fifth morning, I took what was left out to the desert south of my house, and I dug a hole and I buried it. I don't know if it did anything, but I did it. I never went back to that spot. I never went back to that whole part of the state. I camp now sometimes, but only in established campgrounds with other people around. I don't sleep in the tent. I sleep in the truck with Cooper. The doors are locked. I told my mom what happened about two weeks after. She got real quiet and then she said, Your grandmother used to talk about something like that. My grandmother is from a small town in New

Mexico, and she passed away when I was 12. My mom didn't say anything else about it, and I didn't ask. I tried to find the gas station once, about three months later, on Google Maps. I couldn't find it. I know what highway I was on. I know about how far north of the I 40 I was. There's no gas station at that spot on any map I can find. I'm not saying it wasn't there. I'm just saying I can't find it now. Cooper is fine. He's lying on my floor right now while I write this. He's five years old and his face is starting to go gray a little around the mouth. He's healthy. He still comes camping with me like I said. He still sleeps on my bed. He still does the lean.

But here's the thing, and this is the part I haven't told anyone, not even my mom. For about three months after that night, Cooper would not go outside after dark. He would not even step off the back porch into the yard if the sun was down. He would do his business on the back porch and look ashamed about it and come right back in. I had to clean it up every night. I didn't yell at him. I knew why he was doing it. He eventually got over it.

He'll go outside at night now. But every once in a while, maybe once a month, he'll be lying on my bed asleep, and he'll suddenly sit up and stare at the bedroom window, and his hair will come up along his back, and he'll stare at that window for sometimes a full minute, completely still, before he lies back down. I don't look at the window when he does that. I just put my hand on his back and I tell him it's okay.

That's my story. I don't know what that thing was. I have my guesses, and I have read some stuff online, and I am not going to get into it. any of that, because I don't want to attract anything to myself by saying words I shouldn't say. I just wanted to tell somebody, stay out of the desert at night, and if your dog comes back wrong, get in your truck and leave everything behind.