Your True Tales
July 2007 - Page 2
Dark Entity of the Woods
by Bryan
Around June or July in 1999, I was at Axehead Lake in Des Plaines, Illinois, which is at a forest preserve, and mostly used for fishing, but there is a packed gravel path that encircles the lake that I sometimes would jog around. The lake itself isn't very big; it's more a large pond, and to its north there is a large swath of lawn and a parking lot; to the south and east it's bordered by the expressway; and to the west, by woods.
It was around lunchtime, I remember, because right before that, I stopped at a McDonald's for something to eat, and it was the lunch rush. It must've been a weekday I was off from work because there were people at the McDonald's in their work clothes and the forest preserve was almost empty (two other cars parked there besides mine).
As I began jogging on the path around the lake, I saw that the two cars belonged to two older gentlemen fishing toward the southeastern corner of the lake. After a couple times around the lake, I had to use to washroom, and as there were no washrooms there, I decided, being a guy, to go into the woods and use a tree, so to speak. I noticed a dry muddy path and followed it into the woods until I was out of view from the fishermen across the lake and found a tree and started to do my thing.
A few seconds later, I happened to look further up the mud, weed-covered path to my right, and saw what at first I thought was someone coming up the path in a long black coat (I recall it being somewhat humid that day and thought that was sort of strange. I quickly zipped up and turned toward the person still at least 25 or 30 feet down the path. They hadn't moved. My view was a little obscured by trees in full foliage and heavy shrubbery, but as I looked more carefully, I noticed it wasn't a person at all, which is when I began to feel a knot in my stomach and my palms begin to sweat.
It was about 6 or 7 feet tall, totally black, without any features, almost hazy or blurry, and shaped like one of those old-fashioned sheet-ghosts, but black rather than white. It was completely soundless. I could hear birds chirping and the sounds of cars going by on the expressway in the distance, but that was it. Then, suddenly, the thing started to sway ever so slightly left and right. When that started, I backed up onto the path, and once back on the mud path, ran out of the woods like I was on fire, not looking back, though I sensed it was still there.
When I got back to the gravel path along the lake, I peered into the opening in the woods, but with the bright sun now nearly blinding me and the darkness of the woods with its dense trees, I couldn't see anything. I don't have a clue what that thing was I saw, but it filled me with a feeling of panic and dread I can't really explain. Since that day, though I've gone back to Axehead Lake to jog around it, I've never ventured back into the woods.
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