What Was That? (2)

Rural Texas can be a scary place in the winter at night even when things seem fine. I live in a small three bedroom home with my two children, my nephew and his girlfriend. I live way off the beaten path surrounded by woods and cow pastures. It is very dark except for one yard light on my property.

I don't know the history of this land, or anything about the former people who lived here. They left behind a shed full of boxes and other items. The landlord told me I could clean it out, keep what I wanted and throw away what I didn't want. A friend of mine took some things home with her. A few days later she brought me an urn with ashes and bones in it. She said it was in a box of things she took from the shed. I asked the landlord if she knew where the former tenants were, but she didn't know where they had moved to or how to reach them.

My son took the ashes to the creek and buried them, hoping to put them to rest. When I say rural, I mean twenty-five miles from the nearest town, we're way out there. About seventy-five yards from my back porch is the creek bed. I admit there are all kinds of wildlife that roam this property and woods, but I don't know how to explain this.

Around three weeks after my son buried the ashes, one night after work, I picked my daughter up from my moms. When I got there she was on the phone with my son, and he was saying "Someone's in the woods behind the house walking around". We didn't think anything of it, because there are cows on this property. I picked up my nephew and his girlfriend and brought them home with me.

When we arrived my son was obviously shaken and upset. He said he went to get firewood and heard someone walking about 25 feet from the backdoor, and so he didn't bring very much firewood in. My nephew decided to investigate, when he came back in, he said you have to hear this. My yard light does not reach the small group of trees where the sounds were coming from, it just fades to darkness and shadows. There was definitely something or someone out there walking around. We could hear the leaves rustling under the footsteps, and the pace sounded like two legs walking and not a four legged creature. So my nephew took the car keys and moved the car where the headlights could shine into the trees so we could see what was walking around.

As soon as the headlights were pointed at the trees, the sound stopped, but the headlights revealed nothing. So my nephew walked the few feet to the group of trees to look, but there was nothing there. We shrugged it off, forgot about it and went to bed. Around three nights later, my four dogs were restless wanting to go in and outside. They would go to the backyard and bark continuously. Romeo, my male terrier dog ran out to the group of trees and I could hear him barking and running around, I could also hear something walking. My nephew once again got the keys and shone the lights on the group of trees, all they revealed was Romeo as if nothing was there. He ran to the car thinking he was going for a ride.

I got all the dogs back in the house except one female, Reeses, who would not go to the group of trees, but sat behind my car barking at them. She would not come inside no matter how much we called her, mind you if this would have been a cow we would have seen it in the headlights, had it been a skunk, a opossum, or an armadillo we would have heard it running instead of no sound when the headlights or the dogs disturbed it. Once again we decided to shake it off and ignore it, but as hard as we tried, the air was still bad, and we could not shake an uneasy feeling of being watched. We all decided to go to bed. Around 2:30 A.M, we were awakened to the sound of a loud thump on the backdoor. We all jumped up in a frantic scramble and collided in the hallway. What was that, we were all freaked. We could hear

footsteps walking around the house, and the dogs were barking frantically. We all ran to different windows trying to see what was out there. No one could see anything, but the sound of footsteps continued, so we opened the front door to walk outside but they stopped when we walked onto the porch. By now we were really freaked out. The dogs ran around the house sniffing the ground, but nothing was there. We quickly got the dogs inside the house and locked the doors. For the rest of the night, all was quiet although we did not sleep for fear of the unknown. That morning when the sun came up, we went outside to investigate. On the back porch in front of the backdoor, were two muddy barefoot prints, although they were the only ones anywhere. We can't explain it, and that was the last time it has happened so far. We now keep a very watchful eye on the woods behind the house. I don't keep my firewood in the backyard anymore, and try to stay indoors at night, but there is always that ever present feeling that we are being watched.