I've learned in life that things don't always go as planned, and sometimes life throws
you curveballs. Sometimes those curveballs are tall, hairy, and just a little bit scary.
For us it came during a December storm that knocked out our power. We live outside town,
not in the middle of nowhere outside of town, but far enough out that the road goes from
being normal to more narrow and heavily patched. And the mailboxes along the road are spaced
farther and farther apart, and you can't always see the houses from the road.
It's all fields and tree lines out my way. There's a couple shallow creeks and a stretch
of woods that's a very welcome relief from the summer heat, and a barren wasteland
of dark tree trunks in the winter. We're also just far enough out that the power lines
are still running above ground out to us, and power outages are not uncommon. Whereas
the new subdivision on the other side of town has all of their power underground. My brother
there says they never lose power. Well, all things considered, I still would rather live
where I live.
Not week before Christmas had been one of those weeks where the calendar is full, and everything
moves at breakneck speed, school concerts, buying gifts, wrapping paper, grocery runs, cookie
swaps, church plays, you know. Well, you're happy, but you're also a little stressed.
And then the storm came in. The way winter storms can do out here. They'll make a liar out
of all the weathermen who say it's only going to be an inch or so, and then it drops
six to eight inches. It started as just pretty flakes just after breakfast. The kind of snow
that makes you think, "Good, we're going to have a white Christmas." The kids pressed their
faces up to the window glass all happy. "My wife put on her playlist of old nostalgic Christmas
music," Rosemary Clooney, Connie Francis, "Birl Ives and Perricomo just to name a few."
Outside the snow was gently falling. Inside my wife was baking, and the house smelled wonderful.
We had a warm fire and beautiful music. Just a little bit, I felt like I was living in
a postcard. But then the temperature dropped. The wind showed up by afternoon, and the snow
was now coming down sideways with bits in it that felt like balls of sleet. They made little
wet, slapping sounds when they hit the windows. The weather outside no longer looked beautiful
to me. It began to look ominous, dangerous. Suddenly it felt less like living in a postcard
and more like in a Stephen King novel. It went out and ran the snow blower down the drive,
though the snow was still falling. As I was doing so, my neighbor Dale drove by. He stopped
and leaned out to ask me how I was fixed for fuel for my generator. I said, "I was fixed
good." Then he reminded me if I needed more to get it now before the storm got worse. I
said no. I was good, and I reminded him that I always had extra fuel on hand. But at the
same time I got his meaning. He was expecting this was going to turn into, "Well, something,"
they hadn't predicted. Dale nodded once to me, like that soft, something important he'd
been thinking about. Then all he said to me was, "Well, I'm guessing you just might need
that fuel tonight." We talked a little bit more and then he drove on. I stood at the end
of my driveway watching his tail lights go down the road. I'd lived there long enough to
know that old Dale was right about weather stuff, probably ninety percent of the time. I don't
know how he did it, but he did. And Dale was not a dramatic kind of guy. If Dale mentions
fuel for your generator, you should probably listen. I grew up in another type of rural area,
but it was a house where our power outages weren't uncommon, so they weren't a crisis. It was
just something we dealt with. My parents handled it all like pros. When the lights went out,
my dad would make it a fun thing. He'd tell us, "We're going to live like the pioneers
for a while." Us kids would all go scrambling for candles, oil lamps, matches, extra blankets,
and dad would go get the wood stove going, and we kids would race to stack up more wood
from outside on the porch. Now then we would play board games all night, play some rounds
of cards, and we would tell stories. Mom kept a kettle on the wood stove and we would drink
endless mugs of hot chocolate. We kids loved those power outage nights. There was nothing
scary for us about them. So as an adult, I kept that tradition. Not because I'm so sentimental
— although I am more than I like to admit — but because I liked what it did to the house.
It seemed that time slowed down for us in there. And this year, with everything feeling
much too fast, I really wanted that. But what I didn't know was that I would also be making
a lighthouse beacon in the middle of the woods. Our power went out just after seven o'clock.
You might think your house is quiet, but you find out different in a power outage. The
fridge stops humming. The heat pump quits. The almost imperceptible humming of dozens and
dozens of things plugged in and around the house all comes to a stop. That's the silence.
I looked up surprised. The room almost dark already with the winter storm blowing outside.
The kids cheered like it was time for fireworks. "All right, my little pioneers," I said.
"Let's do it the old way tonight. You ready?"
"Of course they were. I got the candles. My wife got the lanterns. And my kids ran around
collecting blankets like we were planning to build a huge winter snow fort with them in
the living room. And for a while, it honestly was great. We ate dinner by lantern light,
leftovers and ham, and the last of the Christmas cookies that someone had dropped off.
And of course, we had hot chocolate after dinner."
My wife pulled out the board games, and the kids went straight for the one with the most
pieces, because of course they did. And just like that, neither the storm outside nor
the power outage were the main thing in our house anymore. We were just a family pretending
we were doing it, like the old pioneers, and having a good time doing it.
Somewhere around 8'30, the house started cooling. I always feel at first around my feet and
ankles. The storm outside was getting worse. The wind was rising. Snow and ice tapping
on the windows like someone was out there asking to come in.
"I knew we'd be okay for several more hours, but I also knew the way these outages could
go out here. Sometimes it's just an hour. Sometimes it'll go all night."
We have a generator, but I don't like running it unless we absolutely need to. It's loud,
and it's a magnet for every nosy creature within a mile. Still, with the temperature dropping,
with the house full of kids, I decided to at least go out and make sure everything was
ready.
"I'm going to go check the generator and get it ready," I told my wife. "She nodded.
Be careful. I grabbed my coat, hat, gloves, and a flashlight, then I stepped into my boots
out by the back door. When I opened the door, the cold hit me in the face like a prize fighter,
it hurt. The porch light was dead, of course, so the only light was the candlelight behind
me spilling through the kitchen windows. The snow was coming down hard now. I walked the
short path to the shed where we keep the generator. The shed is about 30 yards from the house,
near the edge of our yard where it starts turning into fields. And beyond that field is
the tree line. And beyond that tree line? Well, that's where you have to admit you don't
have control of anything. Not the land, not the animals, nothing. It's wild, and we all
know it."
I got to the shed, brushed no off the latch, and pulled the door open. Cold air rushed
out, smelling like old gasoline and old wood. I swung my flashlight inside, checking
the generator, topping the fuel, and checking the other fuel cans. Everything looked normal.
I walked back out of the shed, turned to latch the door back, and that's when I felt it.
As a sensation you get when you know you're being stared at, I don't have to explain it.
I know we've all felt it. I stepped back, and stepped around and shined the flashlight
down both sides of the shed, but saw nothing. Then I turned my flashlight toward the tree
line beyond the shed, and panned it all around. At first it was nothing but snow and tree
trunks and shadows. Then the beam caught a shape that did not match the trees. A very vertical
silhouette. Two broad was shoulders. Two tall were the head. Darker than the darkest tree
trunk out there. It was standing just inside the woods. I actually blinked hard and swung
the light away and back, like my eyes were glitching, but the silhouette didn't move. That's
what made my throat go really dry. Because the deer will move, coyotes will move, even a
bear will shift on its paws. But not this silhouette. It was perfectly still.
The snow gusted again in the tree branches sway, dropping snow in swirls. For a moment
the silhouette blended into the swirling snow, just bits of darkness showing through.
Then the wind eased, and it was still there. Same spot, same height. My flashlight being
trembled slightly. I told myself, "It's just a tree trunk. It's some kind of weird branch
sticking out. It's just the nerves getting to you with the storm."
But then the shape turned its head. And as it did so, I caught eye shine. It didn't reflect
any when my light was directly on it, but when it moved its head to the side, it flashed,
and I saw it. It was red eye shine.
The movement was small, but it was enough for me to confirm it was a living thing that
moved. And that's when my brain stopped trying to label what I was seeing as a tree.
My heart started beating harder, not from exertion, but from the sudden understanding
that I was out there was something that didn't belong on that postcard I had been living
in earlier that day. I really wasn't sure it belonged anywhere.
I backed up one step. My boots crunching in the snow.
I kept my eye on the dark silhouette. It didn't move. It stood there, and I think it was
watching the candlelight glow coming from the house windows. It was like that light meant
something to it, or maybe it was drawn to it.
I raised the flashlight higher, and now the light caught part of it better, and I saw
dark hair clumped with snow and ice, and then I saw the edge of a face, enough to know
I was looking at something very real and very solid.
I retreated back to the house, fast and quiet. Inside, when I walked in, I had just a moment
of deja vu, the candlelit living room with the board game and pieces on the coffee table,
the mugs of hot chocolate sitting around. It all looked exactly like my childhood memories,
and for just a part of a second, I felt safe.
My wife looked up at me. "You okay?" "Yeah," I said, lying, because the kids were right there,
and I wasn't going to turn Christmas pioneer play-fun night into Christmas screen time.
I shook the snow off my coat and set my flashlight on the table.
"Did you start the generator?" she asked. I said, "No, not yet. It's fine for now, I think."
I sat down with them, and I tried to slip back into the game, but my brain kept going back
to the tree line. Soon enough, the kids were arguing again about the rules of the game.
My wife was mediating, and outside, the wind that had started up again and earnest was
now pushing snow against the windows and soft bursts.
The candles flickered, shadows moved across the walls, and the part of me that was still
a kid thought, "This is really perfect." Then the adult part of me thought, "Our windows
looked like beacons in the darkness."
Around 930, our dog started acting weird. He's a good dog. He's big and steady. He's the
kind that barks at delivery trucks and squirrels, and sometimes the neighbor's cat. But he also
calms down pretty quick, too. But there was no calming him down, though. He stood by the
front window with his body stiff, ears forward, making a low rumble in his chest.
My wife noticed. "What's he doing?" she asked.
"I don't know," I said, trying to sound casual. "It's probably a deer out there."
I said it, but I didn't believe it.
Our dog's nails clicked on the floors he shifted. He sniffed the air hard like he was pulling
scent from cracks around the window frame. My daughter said, "Daddy, what's he looking
at?"
"Probably nothing," I said. But I walked over and looked out, keeping my face calm. All
I could see was snow in the yard and the dark beyond. But then the wind gusted. The candle
light reflected in the glass, and I saw my own face staring back at me. And then, behind
my reflection, something moved. Not out in the yard, farther back, along the edge of the
field near the tree line. A dark shape gliding between the trees.
I stepped away from the window immediately, not because I didn't want to see it, but I
didn't want my kids to come and look out, too. Because you know, kids noticed everything.
My wife was watching me. "What's out there," she said.
Nothing I said, just a lot of snow. My wife didn't buy it for a second, but she didn't press
me right then. She knows me. She knows when I'm holding something back, and I know by her
look when she knows I'm holding something back. I went to the hallway closet, grabbed the
bigger flashlight and checked my phone again. Still, no service. Of course not. And of course,
we had gotten rid of the landline a couple years before because now we had cell phones and
fiber optic internet. Who needs a landline? So we got rid of it. Of course we did.
In time the storm got louder. The house creaked in the wind. The trees made that slow,
rustful sound as the storm battered them around. We all stayed in the living room together.
It was the warmest there, and I felt better keeping everyone together. I read them several
books, and then they asked for their favorite, the night before Christmas.
When I finished the poem, my son asked, "Do you think Santa can see our house without
any lights on?" My wife laughed, "Honey, Santa doesn't need lights to find us." Then my daughter
said, "Don't worry. He can see all the candles." That made my skin prickle because my daughter
was right. You could see those candles out there. And whatever was out there could see
them too. Close to eleven, there was a sound at the back of the house. Nothing loud. It
was more of a soft tapping sound. Then there was a swoosh behind it, as if something was
brushing up against the siding. The dog's head snapped up. It started that low rumble
and it's throed again. There came another tap. Then a scraping sound, it was faint, like a
hand sliding along wood. My wife's eyes met mine. And this time she didn't ask what. She
already knew what was going on was not normal. I stood up slowly. The kids watched me,
suddenly very quiet. "Stay here," I said to my wife. "Keep them in the living room." Her
face tightened. "What is it?"
"I don't know," I said to her honestly. "But stay here."
I grabbed my flashlight, jacket and gloves, went to the back door and put my boots on
again. The handle of the door felt too cold even through my gloves. I took my handle of
the handle. I realized I really did not want to open that door. I flicked the porch lights
switch out of habit and of course nothing happened. The darkness out there stayed. So I took a deep
breath and I cracked the door just a couple inches, just enough for the flashlight to poke
out. I aimed the flashlight all around. Snow whipped past, brightened the beam. The yard
was empty. But the smell hit immediately. Thanked, but unmistakable if you've ever been
around livestock or wild animals up close. Musky, wet, earthy. Like damp fur and old leaves
and something else, something sour underneath all of it. My heart started pounding again.
I closed the door quietly and locked it. I returned to the living room where there was an abundance
of candles and lamps glowing all around. It was almost as bright in there as when we had
electricity. I blew out most of the candles and all but one oil lamp, turning the wick
down on that last lamp. The room darkened immediately. I pulled the curtains tighter and
threw a blanket over the side window by the kitchen. My wife came up to my side, her voice
slow when she asked, "What's going on?" I swallowed hard and then I said, "I saw something
by the woods earlier when I went to the shed." Her eyes widened but she didn't freak out.
She's a mom after all. You know when your kids are watching, moms become steel.
"A person?" she whispered. "I shook my head." "No." The dog lit out one deep bark, sharp,
a warning. Then it went back to that low rumbling sound. My son's face went pale. He looked
at me in concern. "Dad?" I crouched down in front of him, keeping my voice steady. "Hey,
buddy, don't worry. We're fine. It's probably just some animal checking the house out because
of the storm." Now that wasn't exactly a lie. It was the most truthful version that I could
give without giving them my fear. My daughter, her voice small said, "Is it a bear?"
In winter, my wife said quickly, trying to lighten it up. No, honey bears are sleeping. But
I saw my wife glance at the windows again because she, like me, knew. Bears weren't the only
big thing in the woods out here. We sat together in the living room with fewer candles now,
the light much softer and more contained. And for a while, nothing happened. The storm
raged, the house held. The kids started to relax again, inch by inch, like they do when
adults go back to acting normal. I almost convinced myself it had moved on.
When, from the front of the house, there was a soft, crunching sound.
Put steps. They weren't fast or frantic. They were slow and heavy. Moving across the snow,
right off the porch, the dog stood up, his hackles raised. I leaned toward the front window
without going all the way to it. The curtain was cracked just enough that I could see a
sliver of the yard beyond. But I saw nothing. Yet the sound continued. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Then it stopped. My kids started a course of asking, "What is it? What's out there?" and
I told them to be quiet, that I needed to listen. They by now had picked up on my fear and
they went to be with their mom on the couch. After more than a minute, my wife whispered,
"Do you see anything?" No, I whispered back. The dog's low-growl had changed pitch, like
he was warning about something that he could smell, but he couldn't see.
Then came a sound that chilled my blood. A sound against the glass of the big window, something
touching or pushing on it. I backed up and I held my breath. My son very softly asked again,
"Daddy?" I turned to the side of my children there on the couch with my wife, all of them
with wide eyes and fear on their faces. And for the first time, I regretted being anti-2a.
I had nothing in the house with which to protect us all.
So I said, "Let's play a game." I said it too quickly and far too bright. Let's play a quiet
game. My son looked at me. He knew I was lying, but he nodded anyway. So we played cards,
and we whispered. And outside, whatever it was, kept moving around the house. I was sure
it was trying to look in the windows. It seemed to stop and pause at everyone. I wondered
if it was unaware that glass could be broken. I prayed it didn't know.
The dog barked once, very loudly and threw himself at the door as if he was going to go out.
"No," I said to him sharply, grabbing his collar and pulling him back. "No, you're not going
out." Because the last thing I wanted was my dog outside with that thing. My wife's
face was very tight. "Honey, you've got to call someone," she said.
I said, "I have no self-service." And that ended that. And then it happened. The moment that
turned this from something is outside into, "This is too real and up too close." The window
squeaked and creaked, like it was cleaning the glass and it was now squeaky, clean. I grabbed
the flashlight, snapped it on, aiming it at the curtains. My hands shook as I reached
forward and pulled the curtain back just two inches, just enough to see. The world outside
was a blur of snow. But right there, inches from the window was a dark mass. And there were
wet smears on the glass. It had been testing the glass. I really think it didn't understand
glass or what it was. It must have seemed like an invisible barrier. And then the dark
mass suddenly became a terrible face looking in at me through the window. It was clear
enough that I saw the shape of a brow bridge, the flatness of a wide nose, the dark line
of a mouth. The eyes reflected my flashlight beam, like red stones. They weren't glowing
on their own. They were reflecting regular animal eye shine. But it was the height of them.
A little bit more than the light of the window. It was standing right there, right in front
of our window, looking in, looking at our candlelight, looking at our life inside this house.
I slammed the curtain shut and backed away. My wife whispered, "What is it? What did you
see?" I swallowed hard and I said the only thing that I could.
My son said, "Is it the big foot?" "Stop it," my wife said, cutting him off. We had all heard
the stories, and I know kids at school had talked about it, too. But we were not going to let
him get voice to it. Although, my wife and I knew that was big foot out there.
Our dog was shaking now, but still growling. Outside, the scraping sound moved along the
wall again, slow. Then the crunch of footsteps returned, drifting away across the yard. Crunch,
crunch, crunch. It wasn't running. It was just going about its business. Like this was
its territory, and our house was something that it needed to investigate. Something it
had never noticed until the night went dark, and we were lit up inside. We sat together
on the couch for a long time afterwards, quiet and whispering. I was thankful we had brought
in more wood, and I kept the fireplace stoked against the falling temperatures. The storm
ease slightly after midnight, the wind dropping enough that the snow started falling straighter.
The temperature fell with it. At around 1am, I decided I couldn't keep the house cooling
down any more without doing something. That generator had to be turned on. I told my wife,
"I'm going to go out and start the generator." I'll be fast. She grabbed my arm and said,
"Don't."
"I have to," I said. She looked at me with that expression that only a spouse has, the
one that says, "I love you, and I hate this, and I know I can't stop you." I pulled on my
coat and boots again and hat and gloves. I kept my flashlight being wide and low as I stepped
outside scanning the yard. The candlelight still glowed from inside, but dimmer now that
we had shut the curtains and snuffed out the majority of the lights. The yard looked
empty, but the woods didn't. Strangely, the woods looked awake. I walked out to the shed
again every crunch of my boots sounding far too loud. When I reached it, I stopped and
listened. Nothing but the wind. I opened the shed, got the generator ready and yanked the
cord. It sputtered for a second, then caught, roaring loudly into the night. The sound felt
like both relief and danger like I had just fired a flare into the darkened night. As
soon as it started, I felt exposed. The generator's roar seemed to announce. "Here we are, warmth
and fuel and human life, come get us."
I hurried, running the extension cord back toward the house, hands clumsy in the gloves.
As I crossed the yard, my flashlight beam swung toward the tree line, and I saw it again.
It wasn't close this time, though. It was standing at the edge of the woods just inside
the darkness, watching the generator's noises and the light in my hand. It was still, tall
and broad, with snow dusting at shoulders. It didn't move, though. And in that moment I understood
something that made my stomach drop harder than any fear that night. This big foot wasn't
passing through. This was it being curious about our light, about us. I did not shine the
flashlight toward its face. I kept moving, kept my eyes up, and got back to the house.
Once the generator was running, we got the bare minimum on, a space heater in the living
room, a lamp in one corner, and the fridge so food wouldn't spoil. We kept the house a
dim on purpose. We didn't want to be a bright beacon in the darkness.
The kids fell asleep eventually, all piled up under the blankets. I guess exhaustion winds,
even over fear. My wife stayed awake with me, sitting on the couch quietly talking at times.
Outside the storm softened, and the howling winds died down. The world had finally gone
back quiet again. At around 2.30, the dog finally laid down, but he kept his ears up and eyes
on the windows. At around 3.30, I thought, just for a second, that I heard the snow crunch
right outside by the front porch, but I went out and checked, and there was nothing there.
After that, there was nothing, no more scraping, no more footsteps, just the generators a distant
roar and the slow settling of snow.
Everything came grey and bitter and still. The outage lasted until almost 10 a.m. A utility
truck eventually came down the road, and I nearly hugged the lineman when he knocked
on my door to tell us they were working on the lines. When the power finally came back,
the house hummed to life as if it was waking up. Lights, heat, all the things we take for
granted.
The kids popped up as if nothing had happened and immediately asked for hot chocolate,
like the night before was just a big camping adventure, and they were ready for breakfast.
My wife moved around, cleaning and resetting the house, preparing to pick up where she
left off with baking when we lost power.
And me? Well, I went outside. I wasn't out there hunting for any kind of proof. I didn't
need any. I know exactly what I saw.
The yard was drifted over in smooth waves of wind-blown snow, but near the front window, where
the snow had been a little sheltered by the porch overhang, I saw big depressions.
These weren't the kind of tracks you would take pictures of. They had been blown over
with snow numerous times and weathered to where they were barely visible. But I saw them
for what they were.
Most heavy, deep press marks spaced too far apart to be a person walking in boots.
And along the side of the house, the snow near the wall was packed down as if something
had walked back and forth, and under the windows they were packed heavily as if something had
stood there, trying to breathe on the glass while looking in.
I stared at the story that I was seeing around my house for quite some time.
And I looked toward the woods where the tree lines stood quiet and ordinary and daylight.
And I felt that same cold humility again.
I didn't own those woods that I knew, but I had begun to wonder about the patch of Earth
I was standing on. I wasn't so sure I owned it any more either.
I'm sending this to you because I've listened long enough to know you're not out there to
make people sound ridiculous, and you're not turning every story into some kind of evidence
and you're not forcing square pegs and around holes to make your own personal theories
work.
I know what was out there that night.
Wasn't some fable or some kind of magic, and it wasn't a prankster.
And there was nothing paranormal about what I saw.
And although at times it felt like one, I wasn't in a monster movie.
There was a winter storm with a long power outage, and that made the whole county and beyond
that county very dark.
And I figured that's prime time for something like a big foot.
To go where it wants to go, where it normally stays away from lights, those lights are out.
Good night to go checking on things.
That's my thought anyway.
And our house, it was just a lighthouse beacon in the darkness with the candles and the oil
lamps.
And it drew something big and dark, something curious about the light that it was seeing,
and the humans that were inside.
It stood there in the darkness, watching us the way we watch animals in a zoo.
Later the next year we got a wired, whole-house, general-act generator that was hooked up to
the gas line.
I never have to go out into the darkness for the generator again.
I have looked on many others, no-we evenings, for what I now know was a big foot.
I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But I've not seen it yet.
And honestly if you want the truth, I hope I never do see it again.
Please keep me anonymous.
Thank you.
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