Sasquatch, the Devil's Hopyard, and the Mountain
I've got three true stories from when I was a kid, of my own adventures. The first two even involve the supernatural, and the third is just plain exciting...
The first took place when my family took me to Canada, to a frontier town reenactment. It was just like going back in time to the old west! What we didn't expect was to encounter a Sasquatch. They had an old covered bridge that was separating one half of the frontier town from the other. Eager to catch the rodeo, we went to cross the bridge when we noticed some children there, screaming. Not surprising, since kids will do that in dark bridges and tunnels. However, what made this odd was that their parents were screaming too. And running, with their kids, away from the bridge! We were far braver, though, so we decided to see what all the silly fuss was about. After going a short way unto the bridge, my mother put her hand out to grab the railing. However, instead of the railing, she grabbed something furry. Looking over at it, she screamed and yelled that there was a naked, hairy man there. At that exact moment, my grandmother accidentally touched it too. Except that she thought it was a bear. I looked over to see what it really was, and I saw this creature that was about seven feet tall, all covered in hair, with claws like a bear, and a face like a caveman with a huge mouth filled with fangs and big, piecing eyes like those of a wild animal. The creature growled, loudly, and as it moved into the light my grandmother said: "That's not a man or a bear!" and suddenly the security guards for the place showed up. By that time we had run to the far end of the bridge, and when we looked behind us to see the outcome of these strange events the creature was gone and the party of security guards could find nothing there, despite so many witnesses. It simply disappeared into thin air. We didn't see it again... and we were glad! This happened when I was about four years old, and I never did forget it. I suppose it isn't every day that you go to Canada and actually see a "Bigfoot"!
The second adventure in this set took place when I was about five years old. My grandfather was taking me to Mystic Aquarium and Mystic Seaport, out in Connecticuit. We often went there a lot when I was little, but on this day we decided to check out the famous "Devil's Hopyard"... which was made famous by the movie "The Dunwich Horror". The place was a national park containing a lot of unusual above-ground rock formations. The gate was open, so we parked the car and went in to have a look around. There was nobody there, and the place was unusually still. No birds, no insects. Nothing but silence. Then, my grandfather heard a loud rustling noise and told me to look at a big shape off in the distance. He said it looked like a bear, but that it's face was all wrong. Then, it got closer. It was a monster the likes of which is hard to explain! It had hooves like a wild boar, it was the size of a bear, and it had a skull with four horns for a face. It made no sound except for a pitter-patter as it saw us, got scared, and bolted back into the woods. I screamed that I thought it was some kind of a devil, my grandfather said he never saw that kind of animal before in his life, and we ran back to the car, took it for a spin around the park, saw nothing more of the beast, and decided to get back on the road to Mystic. That was one of the most frightening things I ever saw! Although some Native American legends tell of a creature called the "Death Bear" that can appear in wild places. The legend goes that if someone sees the Death Bear, then it is an omen of death. Years later, my brother... who wasn't born yet when I saw the creature, and had at the time never learned about my own encounter with it... was riding his bike past a graveyard near some old woods that used to be sacred Indian ground. There, he saw the identical thing I had seen. He hurried home, described it to me and to my grandmother. And my grandmother, being part Native American, knew the legend and told my brother about my adventure at the Devil's Hopyard. We all laughed off the apparition of the Death Bear. But not long after my brother saw it, my grandfather who had himself seen the monster all those years ago passed away from Diabetes. Thus proving true, the legend of the Death Bear being an omen of death. Thankfully... I never saw that horrible thing again.
On a less sinister note, my third story takes place when I was fourteen years old. I went on a hiking trip to Mount Tom... which is located in Easthampton, Massachusettes. With us that day were my mother, my grandfather, and my cousin Chris. To begin the day, I decided to take Chris up to Goat's Peak, a nasty outcropping of rock topped by some old ruins. There, I dared Chris to scale a sheer cliff up into the window of the ruins. He refused, so I called him a coward and decided to take the dare myself. When I got about halfway up the cliff, Chris yelled that I was insane so I told him that if he was that afraid he shoulf take the easy way and go up the nearby path which led to the old ruins. He agreed, and said he'd be waiting for me there. My grandfather kept watch on me, warning me not to fall since if I fell I would have broken my neck and died at that height. Heedless, I climbed the rest of the way. Just hands and feet, no ropes or any gear. Perhaps I was crazy back then, but I made it! I put my hands up into the window of the ruins, and climbed in. Chris was waiting there with his mouth wide open in astonishment. However, I was soon to learn that an adventure can begin well but end very nasty indeed! I led Chris over the mountain and into some dense woods, where I knew of a place where you could obtain real lava rocks, created back in the prehistoric age when Mount Tom was part of a volcanic mountain range. These rocks are now cold with time, and you can tell them because they are perforated like unto a sponge, and covered in reddish orange sulpher. There was an area where two trails intersect. We took the long trail, and right as it began I led Chris up a steep hill towards a cave-like indentation in the rock-face at the hill's summit. We made it up to the indentation, where we found our prizes: our coveted lava rocks. I warned Chris not to take too much... because it could start a rockslide. He didn't listen to me, and stuffed his pockets. All at once, the rocks came down, and we slid down the hill amidst the debris! We got halfway down the hill when I yelled to Chris to follow me unto a shortcut off the hill. A dangerous shortcut: a path that ran across a bunch of smaller slopes covered with dense pine trees. We had escaped the rockslide, but now we were plummeting across uneven terrain with branches smacking us in the face. About halfway into this bramble, I took a branch directly to my left eye and was lucky to escape with only a black eye that day. Luckily, even with one eye open I was able to locate what I was looking for, the nice flat, safe trail leading back to where my mother and grandfather were waiting for us. In the end, we split the lava rocks even, despite having lost some during our flight from the rockslide. That day... I felt a quite lot like Indiana Jones!