Iwas walking around with my friend in North Carolina, during the summer of 2002. We had her cousins with us and we had been walking on her farm. The dog, Smokey, was with us. He loved to follow her and I around anywhere even if it was someplace dark and creepy. He was afraid of nothing. We were encouraged as we walked closer and closer to the far off corn field that her family cropped every fall. Jonah thought up a game. We would all play hide and go seek in the corn field. What a fun game we thought!

Smokey pranced in after my friend, Sam, and I walked on towards the far side of the corn field. Emma and Jonah, her cousins, were walking behind us and we advanced towards the middle of the corn field. We walked in and then we all took off in different directions. Smokey followed Sam, I ran to the back near the forest that divided the farm and the cornfield. Jonah and Emma stuck together and followed the corn paths at a slow pace. I was trying to keep away from them, more like Sam. I was running at top speed most of the time and I was getting tired. I thought I saw Smokey and turned and went the other way to avoid Sam. Eventually though we found each other. We began walking and looking for Emma and Jonah. Neither of us had seen them running or walking around in the field. Smokey had left Sam, she told me a little while ago. She turned away as we split up to go and find them. Then we heard Emma scream. Chills went up both our spines. We dashed towards the direction we had heard it from. It was toward the opening. Suddenly, Sam stopped running. I looked at her expectantly. "What?" I asked her. She stood there gazing into the corn rows around us, then shrugged. "I thought I heard something," she muttered. We kept going and then I heard something. It was like paws hitting the ground at a pace that matched ours. She stopped again. "There is something following us..." her body had gone straight as she began to jump up and down looking for Smokey. She called out his name twice, but we never saw him and the corn rows were still. Not a single corn stalk was moving. I turned and looked around, it seemed like something was breathing all around us. Sam shivered and looked around then told me quietly to come on. We ran forwards and we could hear the breathing behind us. Those eerie foot falls were coming again behind us. I tripped and she skidded around and looked at me to make sure I was okay. I was scared by then. We ran out of the corn field heaving harshly. Sam gasped, I looked up and saw Emma, Jonah and Smokey on the old house's porch. We walked forwards cautiously. "How long were you out here on the porch?", Sam asked them. "We came out about 1 minute after you guys went to the middle and we got scared and sat on the porch waiting for you guys to come out." Emma smiled. "What, did you hear something?" Sam muttered yes then looked down at Smokey. I crossed my arms. "When did Smokey come out?", not long after they had come out, they had told us carelessly. Emma said no one screamed when we asked her about it. Jonah nodded apprehensively, he was always a little quiet. Jonah smiled and quietly murmured Smokey never went in after he had first come out. And had been sitting out here with them for the past 15 minutes. Emma's dad walked out and we silently decided it was best not to tell them about the noises in the corn field.

We didn't go back in for a while; Sam went in a little ways at night then quickly ran out. We haven't gone in since, and I don't intend to.

Thanx for reading. This is, by the way, a true story.