A roar that made the mirrors on the truck vibrate.
The teller worked for a company that pumped water through miles of plastic pipeline over the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania to fracking sites. Over long distances the water needed booster stations to keep it moving, and those stations sit wherever the pipe runs, often deep in the woods at the bottom of a valley. A shift meant one person, a light plant, a huge roaring compressor and a handheld radio that barely reached the next station up the line.
On this night the teller was at the water source in Washington County, at the end of a long gravel road beside a creek. They had a truck with a flat tyre that still ran, so at least there was heat and power. They also had a light plant, the compressor, a portable toilet and a spotlight. There was no phone signal. The nearest coworker was a mile uphill.
Around 2 a.m. the frack shut down and the pumps went quiet. In the silence, the teller heard loud cracking and crashing in the trees about thirty yards in front of the truck. They swung the spotlight over the tree line and saw nothing.
Then came a roar from the trees, louder than anything they'd ever heard. They felt it in their ribs, and the truck's mirrors shook while it went on. A big log came sailing out of the woods and hit the front of the truck. Then they heard something crash away into the dark.
They were so frightened they nearly threw up. The coworker a mile up the hill had heard the roar too. He drove down to collect them, and for the rest of the night the two of them made every trip to the pumps together. The teller never worked that station alone again.
After they left the job they heard more from another crew. Those men had been hearing noises and crashing in the woods for several nights, so they turned the light plant's four big lamps to shine into the tree line after dark. Not long after, during a shift change that left the site empty for half an hour or so, the light plant was shoved into the creek and wrecked.
The teller accepts it could have been people. But they noticed a pattern: every time anyone pointed a light into those woods, something happened, sometimes several nights in a row and sometimes weeks apart. Anyone doing it would have had to be out there almost around the clock.
There's one more report. A week or two after the job ended, a friend the teller has known and trusted for years drove down alone after sundown to collect a piece of equipment. He's a man who'd spent many nights alone in the woods on jobs without a second thought. The moment he stepped out of the truck he felt watched, as if he shouldn't be there. He hooked up the equipment anyway. On the way out, as he drove past the tree line, a huge, hulking black figure was standing about four feet from his window, watching him go by. The teller says it nearly scared him to death.