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This encounter is part of our Spooky Appalachia Tennessee Cryptids video, featuring eyewitness accounts and regional folklore.
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My husband, and I have hiked plenty of trails, but there is something about the stretch of the Appalachian Trail near Frederick, Maryland, that feels… crowded. Not with people, but with a thick, humid silence that seems to press against your eardrums. We were about four miles in when the atmosphere shifted. The birds stopped mid-song, and the wind, which had been rattling the canopy, just died.
I looked about thirty yards ahead, near a bend where the grass grows long and pale. Something was standing right at the edge of the path.
At first, I thought it was a stray husky or maybe a wolf-hybrid. It was massive, with shaggy, matted grey fur that looked like it had been dragged through ash. Its ears were sharp and pointed, pitched forward as if it were listening to the very heartbeat of the forest.
But as I stared, a coldness crawled up my spine. The harder I tried to focus on it, the more my vision seemed to fail. It was like looking at a heat mirage on a highway; I had to squint until my eyes ached, but I could only ever grasp the outline. Every time I tried to lock onto its face to see eyes, a nose, a tongue the details would smear and blur. It was a silhouette made of static and shadow, yet it felt more “present” than anything else in the woods.”Hey” I whispered, nudging my husband hard. “Look at that over there.”
He didn’t stop walking, but I saw his jaw tighten. “I see it,” he said, his voice lower than usual. “It’s just someone’s dog, probably off-leash. Don’t worry about it.”
His acknowledgement should have comforted me, but it did the opposite. It confirmed that this wasn’t a trick of my light-sensitive eyes. We both saw the tall, wolf-like shape standing there, watching us with a face that refused to be seen.
As we approached, the air grew unnaturally cold. The “dog” didn’t growl. It didn’t wag its tail. It didn’t even breathe. It just stood perfectly still, a grey void against the green brush. We were only ten feet away when I blinked just once and it was gone.
It didn’t bolt into the undergrowth. It didn’t dissolve into mist. It simply ceased to exist in the space it had occupied.
Where the tall, shaggy creature had stood was now a rotting tree stump. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I walked over to the spot, my legs feeling like lead. There was no way we had mistaken this for the animal. The stump was barely two feet tall, rounded and moss-covered and a completely different in height, color, and shape from the pointed-eared predator we’d been staring at for the last three minutes.
I looked down at the soft earth surrounding the stump. The ground was damp from a morning drizzle, the kind of dirt that holds a footprint for days.
There were no paw prints. No disturbed leaves. But as I stood there, I felt a prickling sensation on the back of my neck, the distinct feeling of being watched from a place I couldn’t see.
Later that night, I did some digging into the local folklore of the Maryland mountains. I found old stories of the “Snallygaster” and the “Dwayyo,” but what chilled me most were the accounts of the Black Shuck or the Ghost Dogs of the South Mountain range. Legends say they aren’t animals at all, but guardians or omens that occupy the “thin places” of the woods. They appear as blurry, indistinct shapes that mimic the world around them—hiding as stumps or shadows until you get just close enough to realize they aren’t there.
My husband still insists it was just a trick of the light, but I saw the way he gripped his hiking poles when that “stump” appeared. We don’t hike that section of the Frederick trails anymore. Because now, every time I see a grey rock or a weathered stump in the distance, I find myself squinting, terrified that the outline will suddenly start to breathe.
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This is one of many cryptid encounter stories featured on our YouTube channel.
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