THE TRAIL RIDE I always believed that my friend Viola had some strange psychic connection to the supernatural, but never really understood it. The story I'm about to tell happened about 13 years ago and I can remember it like it happened yesterday. Viola and I became good friends when I started my freshman year in high school. We both had a love for horses and her family happened to own nine. I began going over her house to ride and hang out like a lot of teenagers do. On the weekends we would going riding for hours at a time on the different trails around the town. There was this one trail that we really enjoyed riding on, because it took a good 2 hours to get from one end to the other and there were trees down that we could jump the horses over. One day, just before school was supposed to start for the year, we decided that we were going to take the horses and go camping on that particular trail. See, there used to be an old Estate about 1/2 mile up the begining of the trail. So, we got up early that morning and fed the horses and began packing everything we would need. It took a couple of hours to get everything then we headed out around noon time with the two horses we always ride. The day was warm with a no breeze at all. We talked as we rode the horses down the road to the trail. Everything seemed normal around us, the birds where singing and horses where walking on slowly, nothing to make you suspect that there was something unexplainable about to happen. We finally got to the begining of the trail which is actually an old driveway to the Estate. When we turned up the driveway everything was as it had been when we were riding down the road. I was telling Viola how I wish the summer was longer and the school season was shorter when she stopped me in mid-sentence. Viola asked me if I had heard anything and I said "no". Viola said "that's what I mean, there is no sound at all". So I listened and sure enough the birds that had been singing where gone, there were no sounds at all. Then something rather strange happened. As warm as it was (90 degrees) a cool breeze began to rustle by us. It felt like the temperture had dropped 40 degrees. We really didn't think anything of it, we figured it was a gust that came through the trees. We continued to walk down the driveway to where the old house used to stand. As the horses started to turn a corner that was in the road they both stopped. I looked at Viola and asked what the problem was since she was in front of me. She told me that there were two white dogs standing on either side of the road up ahead near the gate columns. I rode up next to her and saw the dogs. They were pure white from head to toe and they were of solid form. Their eyes were pink like an albino. We made the horses walk on even though they wanted to turn back. The dogs seamed to be friendly, wagging their tails, so we figured they belonged to hunters or someone. Everything was alright until we passed by them through the gate. Then it seemed like the whole world changed. The dogs turned around and started growling and barking, the horses sensed something because they started prancing around and side-stepping. Then one of the dogs lunged out at my horse and she kicked out her back foot to block it. The other dog got in front of my friend's horse and jumped up at its face. We both decided to get out of there, so we took off in a gallop down toward the woods to get on the trail. When we turned around at the edge of the woods we watched in amazement as the two dogs slowly disappeared into a thick fog. Well, that scared us and got the horses moving into the woods at a rather quick pace. We figured we would take the long way back to her house and forget about the camping. This is where the story gets real weird, because we've ridden hundreds of times on this trail, sometimes on a daily basis, and we know every inch of the woods. After about 10 minutes of pretty hard galloping we slowed the horses down to calm them and try to think of a logical explanation to what we had seen when Viola asked what part of the woods we were in. I looked around and didn't recognize the area, but figured it was the angle we were looking at it or something. We walked up a little further and came across a hill. It had some large rocks sticking out from it and was about 20-25 feet down. Nothing the horses couldn't climb down. I noticed a small house about 200 feet or so from the bottom and thought that maybe we were near the end of the trail, which has summer cottages by the lake near it. I went down the hill first, but Viola was very hesitant to go because she said that it wouldn't be safe for her to go down there near the house. I told her that I would climb back up and walk her horse down so she could climb down without riding him. She finally agreed, so I climbed up and got her horse and walked him down and over to my horse. At that point the house was about 150 feet from us. I took the reins of my horse from around the tree and began walking towards the house with Viola right behind me. As we got closer we noticed very unusual writing and symbols on the outside of the house, that's when the horses started to freak out. They both started backing up and snorting. It took all our strength to make them follow us the the front of the building. We started to walk to the front of the house when this feeling of fear and danger started to creep up on me. I could tell that Viola felt the same thing just by the look on her face. As we pulled on the horses to make them move a little faster behind us this over powering stench of death and decay came out of nowhere, I thought I was going to be sick. Then we turned the corner of the house to the front yard and there were all these things flung all over the front of the house. I told my friend to hold my horse so I could get a closer look since the horses wouldn't move from their spot. When I got to them I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was animals all dead and torn up. Cats, dogs, I swear, you name it, it was there. I turned quickly to go back to my friend and the horses when I heard this low growl coming from the house. I looked at Viola and she looked at me and I ran to her and the horses. I think of all my years riding that was the first time I ever just jumped on a horse, no foot in the stirrup or anything. We started to turn the horses around and get our butts out of there when the front door opened and figured appeared in the doorway. It was not transparent or misty, it was solid and big. The figure had a hooded cape type thing over it and was bare footed. I kicked my horse to go, but she was way ahead of me. Viola was right behind me and when we looked back the thing was right behind her. It seemed to be running on all fours, kind of like a gorilla would. It chased us for what seemed like forever until we broke out of the woods and on to a main road near the end of the trail. We rode to the police station to report what had happened, but when they went ot investigate it there was only the remains of a burnt down summer cottage, which had been burnt over 20 years ago they said. My friend never told me what she had seen nor what she had heard until a few years ago. Apparently when I had gone to see what the things were all over the front lawn she had heard someone calling her name telling her we had to leave now, because they couldn't hold it back any more and it was hungry again. She also told me that she was able to get a good look at what was chasing her. To her it looked like a deformed human with large sunk in eyes and claw like hands. It had blood stains around its mouth and long canine like teeth. She said that she could feel that it was not of this human world and that it was created by someone or something. She also mentioned that the dogs we had run into at first were trying to stop us from going in the woods, not attack us. I still to this day cannot understand why this all happened and what that thing was, but we did do some research on the area and found out that in the late 1700's there was supposedly a witch that lived in those same woods and used to kidnap babies to perform different spells on them. How true that is I really don't know, but I can tell you this I believe in everything there is out there to believe in, and hope and pray nothing else ever happens again. Thank you for reading. Submitted From: Jennifer, Rhode Is., USA