If it's there at 9 pm, it'll be there at midnight, and it'll be there at 2am.
This dog owner, who had moved to the United States from abroad and knew little of local folklore, rented a house on an isolated cul-de-sac in west Georgia with thick woods starting about ten metres from the back door. The local wildlife office said nothing bigger than coyotes and deer lived in the area, and both were shy.
In early 2020 their two dogs started refusing to go out back at night. They stayed close to the house, stiff and alert, and would suddenly lunge toward the treeline barking, in a way they never did at rabbits. Sometimes they barked at the woods from inside, through the windows. They could hear something walking just inside the trees, and it didn't sound like a four-legged animal. It sounded heavy, snapping branches, and it wasn't scared off by the dogs or by shouting. 'If it's there at 9 pm, it'll be there at midnight, and it'll be there at 2am,' they wrote. Daytime searches turned up no fur, scat, scratches or footprints.
After that first post, readers suggested lights and trail cameras, which they couldn't afford, so a flashlight became part of every trip outside. For about a month nothing new happened.
Then one night, standing at the edge of the patio while the older dog pulled to go back in, they felt the younger dog lunge forward, frantic. Looking up, they saw it standing by one of two big trees at the edge of the woods, half hidden behind the trunk.
Measured against branches they knew well from yard work, it stood about six feet tall. It had light-coloured fur or hair and walked upright, but the legs were shaped more like an animal's, and its arms were long for its body. The face wasn't clear, neither flat nor obviously snouted, and there was no telling if it had a tail. The whole sighting lasted a few seconds at most before they hauled both dogs inside. Searching online afterward, they found that it matched the Alabama 'White Thing' better than any Bigfoot description.
After that the dogs only went out the front. Before long the sounds started coming from the woods across the road as well. On a 1 a.m. walk to a gas station with a friend, something seemed to keep pace with them in the trees, and they got a ride home. They also heard that a neighbour's husky mix had been let out one night and found the next morning with a broken neck and no other injuries, and that someone nearby had moved their horses after they kept breaking out. They didn't know if those stories were true, but the dogs stayed on leashes from then on.