Front Porch Visit Reveals Strange Tale

by Dean Terry
The following is a conversation I had while sitting on the front porch of an old fellow who lives somewhere in South Texas. For personal reasons, he asked that I not use his real name, nor mention the name of the town where he lives.

As we sat on the porch
the old man told a story

He has the weather worn look of a man who has worked outside all his life. Old Joe (not his real name) leaned back in his rocking chair and put his lanky legs on the railing of the porch. He lit a cigarette and stared off into space.

“You want to talk about it now?” I asked.

He blinked a couple of times and roughed his hair back with his fingers. “I don’t know. People would think I’m cock-eyed crazy for sure. Maybe I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” he said.

Not wanting to push my luck too far with the old man I said, “Well, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s your business.”

We both sat there looking out at the lawn, and the little creek just beyond, for at least ten minutes. Finally, he let out a sigh and said, “Well, I need to tell somebody, I guess. This thing’s been hauntin’ me for some time now.” He took his feet off the railing and sat up straight in his chair. He reached around to his jacket and took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.

“You remember that old piece of land I used to own up on the Aransas river?” he asked.

I recalled that some time back he had mentioned the time he bought some land along the river, up near Victoria. Seems like it was 100 acres or so. “Yeah,” I said, “you said some of it, the parts near the river bottom were mostly wetlands and weren’t good for much of nothing.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I like to never found anybody that would take it off my hands. Finally, I sold it to some dude that lives up in Houston.”

I knew better than to ask him if he made a profit from the sale. If I remember right, he had said that he sold the land cheap, just to get rid of it.

He leaned forward and flipped cigarette ashes out over the porch rail. Leaning back again in his chair, he continuted, “I bought that acreage in 1985. Me and my brother had planned to use it to run some cattle up there. Right after I signed the deed, we went up there to walk around the place and figure out how much it would cost to put some fencing up.”

“We had spent the day walking and measuring and such, and about an hour before sundown we found ourselves down near the river bottom. The truck was about 200 yards away, and we could barely see it through the trees.”

“In that area, the Aransas river ain’t very wide. A person could probably walk across it if they wanted to. I had rubber boots on and decided to walk on down through some brush and trees to the edge of the river. My idea was maybe we could fill in some of the wet areas and build a fishing camp down on the river.”

“I got down to the edge of the river and was hunched over, looking into the water when I heard something splashing on the other side. When I looked up, in the tree shadows on the other side of the river, I saw what looked like a tall man.”

“The first thing that come to my mind was my brother had set up some kind of practical joke. He knew we were going up there that day and he had gotten his brother-in-law, who was pretty tall, to come up there and sneak up on me and scare me.”

“It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust and I realized that what I was looking at weren’t no man. This thing was big and had red and brown fur on it. It was standing in the river, about fifteen feet from the bank on the other side, and it was looking straight at me.”

Old Joe stood up and leaned against the porch post. He looked around for his pack of cigarettes, and then slowly lit another one. After a couple of puffs, he continued, “Like I say, I was hunched over looking into the water. Well, real slow like I stood up straight. Man, I hate to tell you but I was scared. I have seen every kind of animal and varmint in these parts, but I had never seen nothing like that, um.. creature.”

“For just a minute I thought, maybe it was a gorilla or something. But that ain’t what it was. It just looked too much like a human being, except it was all furred over. I could see it’s face. It’s face didn’t have no hair on it, but the rest of it’s body, arms and legs, was all covered with fur. And it was big.”

“Well sir, I just stood there. I couldn’t get my feet to move. This thing was still looking at me with a funny… I guess you’d say confused, look on it’s face. He cocked his head to the side and I could see his eyes better. They were not animal eyes, either. They were the eyes of a human being. When I saw it’s eyes, I got scared enough to start moving.”

“The mud was sucking at my boots, but I was still able to turn around. I heard noise in the water and thought to myself, ‘Oh no, he’s coming after me.’ That was the most scared I have ever been in my life. I looked back over my shoulder just long enought to see that he had climbed up on the riverbank on the other side and I saw him walk off into the trees.”

“Well, it didn’t take me long to get off that river bottom and get back up to where my brother was. He had found some pecan trees and had been busy picking up nuts off the ground.”

“Where the hell have you been? Why are you all out of breath? Man, you look white as a sheep,” he said.

I could only say, “C’mon and lets get out of here.”

After we had got back to the truck, got it started and was driving away, I asked, “Did you see anything?”

My brother looked at me like I was crazy. He said, “No, what was I supposed to see?”

I just said, “Nothing,” and kept on driving.

“By then I had been reckoning all this out in my head and realized because of the trees and scrub bushes, my brother couldn’t have seen the river bank from where he was. I wrestled around with the idea of should I tell him what I saw or not. I decided it would be best to keep it to myself.”

Old Joe turned around and stared back out into the yard. He said, in a low voice, “I never told anybody about what I saw. Not even my brother. I figured people would just make fun of me and say I was crazy or something. I didn’t want to have to deal with that. You’re the only person I have ever told about this. Please, if you write this up, don’t make it sound like I am some kind of lunatic or something.”

We sat there for a bit before I got the courage up to ask, “Did you ever go back up there and re-visit where you saw the thing?”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned back facing me, “Nope. Never went on that property ever again. Sold it some time later. Kind of changed my life around after that. I stopped hunting and fishing. After seeing that thing, I would never kill any kind of animal again. That whole thing, seeing that creature, the whole thing only lasted probably a minute. Maybe just a little bit less than a minute. But I’ll tell you something. That was a minute that changed my life.”

By now, the old man’s voice had grown tired. He sat back down in his chair and stared back out towards the yard. He reached around and found his pack of cigarettes and lit another one.

Originally published 31 Mar 2007.

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Front Porch Visit Reveals Strange Tale

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