May 23 at 3am 2024 Penn forest area of Roanoke VA. “Alyssa’ had a chilling experience.
I have knows Alyssa for several years and its safe to say Alyssa is a remarkable young lady. She’s from a good family living in SW Roanoke county. She’s well educated, very professional known for her attention to detail. She is also an exceptional stylist and makeup artist.
Just recently she had something occure that was quite disturbing. In her own words” I was outside my family’s home, waiting on the curb for an Uber to take me to work. As soon as I walked out from the garage, weirdness started to happen. Happening on a street or two away I could hear what sounded like a couple of dogs barking at each other. Which in itself isn’t that strange. But then I could tell things were escalating between them. I heard them getting more aggressive, and the sound coming from one of them was getting higher pitched to the point where it was more akin to a scream. Maybe I’m just mistaking the animal? I mean cats can sorta scream. But bark as well? The noises abruptly stopped when it was at it’s most intense. What happened? Did one of them run off? Did somebody come out to check on the commotion and broke things up? No clue. I still had 15 minutes until my ride came, so all I could do was stand out there with my phone light on. A moment or so later the silence was broken by the call of some animal a few yards down the street. At first I wasn’t too freaked out. I might be close to empty forested hills, but this is still the suburbs in a decent neighborhood. The noise happened again though. Whatever it was, it sounded weirdly aggressive. “wrrrrrreeek” is my best description of what I could discern. I shined my light in the direction I thought it was coming from. Nothing. I still tried to play it off because my ride would be here soon. The following “wrrrrRREEEk” made me raise my phone again. Now across the neighbor’s yard, sitting just in the tree line, were two eyes reflecting my light. I didn’t wanna believe that they were looking at me specifically. I wasn’t a threat, I was somewhat far away. But the longer I stared with my light, the more I realized that they weren’t just looking in my direction, they were undoubtedly transfixed on me. I couldn’t see what the eyes were apart of because of how dark everything was. All I could tell was that it was very low to the ground. With more vigor than before it shouted another “WRRRREEK!” Right, now I’m scared. Now I’m considering to just haul ass back inside and wait for the ride to get here first. The sound of “wrrrEEeeEEek yOouu!” from its throat is where I decided “nope, fuck this” and ran back inside. I waited for as long as I could until the Uber arrived, and even then I was panicking. Thinking that whatever it was, was sitting right outside the door. Thankfully it wasn’t. I hopped in the Uber and didn’t see anything from the safety of the car’s window. I made it to work a little shaken but otherwise okay. I’ve never experienced any high strangeness like that before in this area. Not saying that what I saw or heard was super natural in origin. Maybe it was just a racoon with a terrible case of rabies? But either way, the whole thing had me spooked.
I asked Alyssa for more details. Like how close it was and if there was any form in the shadows she oculd see. She sent me photos of the area and wrote me more.
“It was about 20′ away from where I was standing if I remember correctly. I didn’t hear or see any other animals around at the time I saw it. I don’t think the surrounding neighbors have outdoor pets either. From what I could tell by the angle of the eyes, it didn’t have its head turned down or tilted. From the ground it was starring straight at me, almost like it was locking with my own eyes.
The eyes weren’t too high off the ground. Maybe 6 inches from the ground if I had to guess. It reminded me of the way a four legged animal will crouch and begin to slink towards something. The eyes never blinked, but they were forward facing and were the same size of eyes you could expect to see on large dog or even a person. They had a distinctly yellow color to them. I couldn’t quite tell just how large the whole thing was. The darkness kept it hidden like a veil, even when I was shinning my light at it.”
In researching this there were only a few animals whose size, eye shine and behavior fit close enough, Coyote was the closest but I know of no coyote vocalization like the words she heard.a domestic dog like a husky that could possibly do that hasd a different color eyeshine.
I asked if Alyssa could think of anything else. Before or since.
“I think the only thing I could add to the story is that, a week prior to the incident, I was sitting in my room at night and heard the same far off sounds of animals/dogs fighting each other. I thought it was just someone’s outdoor pets getting rowdy, so I didn’t put much thought into it at the time.”
I asked Alyssa if she would like me to come out and do an investigation of the area, look for tracks or set up camera traps. She declined in true Appalachian fashion. Choosing to let that ‘neighbor’ go about their business privately. Its considered impolite to gossip or fuss about such things here.
