My blood froze. I'd never felt anything like it.
Cole Hollow Road in central Illinois has its own monster. Since the 1970s locals have talked about a big, pale, hairy creature in the woods there. The teller hadn't heard of it until about eight years before posting, when they moved in with a friend and the friend's father in a house at the end of a long dirt driveway, deep in the forest off that road.
The two of them were full of stories: sightings fifty years old, damaged property, trash cans with dents in them shaped like fists. The teller was skeptical. Within days, though, things began to happen. Several times that first week they stepped out the front door to find the trash can flung across the big yard, rubbish torn and scattered, and the can dented as if punched. They took photos, but the phone was lost long ago.
They lived in the basement, which had its own bathroom and a little covered porch with a sliding door, a few feet from a wooded ditch. One night a couple of weeks later, six of them were sitting out there talking late. Small rocks started coming at them from the ditch. The friends assumed someone was pranking them and threw rocks back, and more rocks came. The teller felt something was wrong and talked everyone into going inside.
They hung out in the bedroom next to the porch for a while. Nothing more happened, so around two in the morning they went back out. Tall, leafy plants grew around the porch, thick enough to screen it but with gaps you could see through.
A friend in a tall chair was telling a story, and everyone was laughing and interrupting. Under the noise, the teller thought they heard heavy footsteps nearby. They were looking at their friend as he finished the story. Through the gaps in the leaves behind his head, they saw a patch of shaggy, pure white fur.
Their blood went cold. They had a panic attack, and their friends, alarmed, hurried them inside. When they glanced back as they stood up, the gaps in the leaves were empty.
They didn't sleep in the basement again. Friends stayed up with them upstairs as long as they could, and the teller moved out as soon as they were able. They say they're no longer frightened by it, but they still go over that night in their head a lot.