Halloween Special: 411 Red
(Disclaimer: This is not meant to be taken as an endorsement of David Paulides or the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. It’s simply an idea that came to me during a nature walk inspired by similar stories.)
I met the entity on a cloudy October afternoon just a few days before Halloween. It was on my daily walk that I always take with my Golden Retriever, Rudy, after lunch in the woods behind my house. I guess I do it because it’s the easiest way for me to get some exercise (it’s way easier than sit-ups, that’s for damn sure). I’m sure Rudy appreciates the opportunity to stretch his legs as well.
The walk started like any other. Nothing was out of the ordinary as I walked underneath the warm autumn colors of the forest canopy, wearing a dark red hoodie to protect me from the 43-degree weather. I jumped a six-month-old white-tailed fawn, and Rudy chased after it but failed to catch it. The bird song wasn’t as plentiful, with half the species endemic here in the spring and summer having gone south for the winter. Still, my bird identifier app caught several year-round species, like chickadees, hairy woodpeckers, barred owls, and this one bird I’ve been chasing that I’ve been calling the “Cedar Woods Rattler.” It’s a rattling sound that I mistook for cedar trunks rubbing against one another in the wind at first, but the sound is too regular for it to be anything but an animal of some kind. Is it some grouse (it has a bit of a fowl-like cluck)? A woodpecker? A nightjar? Or is it something else entirely, like a tree frog?
Unfortunately, the answer may elude me until I regain the courage to reenter the woods, for there was something else in there that day that I still get headaches trying to rationalize as any sort of earthly phenomenon.
The encounter began just after I heard the Rattler again as I walked along the edge of the cedar grove next to the northeast corner of a freshly cut cornfield. I recorded the surrounding woods with the bird app, silently begging the Rattler to sing for me again. After recording fruitlessly for about thirty seconds, I suddenly realized there was no sound to record. The chickadees and golden-crowned kinglets singing away in the white pines behind me had fallen utterly silent, as had the insects chirping away in the field to my left. I’m no woodland survival expert, but I know what it means when all the animals suddenly pipe down like that: A predator is lurking about.
As I looked around to catch a glimpse of said predator before it snuck up on me, Rudy started filling the sound vacuum with loud barks and whimpers of distress. He clearly sensed the danger as well as he stared into the cedars with his hackles raised and his tail drooping between his legs. Fearing that his barking would draw the predator’s attention, I whispered to him in a calming tone, hoping that my indoor voice would assure him there was nothing to worry about as we quietly slipped away toward home.
That effort was undermined by something large and wet hitting me on the back of the head with enough force to make me swear out loud. At this point, Rudy’s nerves finally gave out, and he shot off in the general direction of our house, howling as if the hounds of Hell were on his tail.
I rubbed the back of my head and almost lost my lunch when I held my fingers in front of my face. They were covered in blood. I felt around for a few more seconds to make sure it wasn’t my own, and then I turned around slowly to figure out what had left the stain.
Lying in the loam just a few feet behind me was half of a dead cardinal. Which half, you ask? That was the part that really put the fear of God in me.
The little red songbird had been sliced cleanly down the middle, making it resemble one of those lateral anatomical cross-sections you might find in a high school biology textbook. The cut was so clean that it had even split the hapless animal’s beak into two perfect halves (or at least I presume it did, as the other half of the corpse was nowhere to be found).
I puzzled over the bizarre mutilation, wondering what animal could have possibly done something like this. The best I could come up with on the spot was that some sadistic prankster had sawed the cardinal in half with a powerful laser and thrown it at me as some kind of sick joke. Why they would do this, I had no idea. Maybe one of my neighbors had read those blog posts I wrote debunking climate change deniers and decided to take it out on some innocent forest creature to score some cheap political points? But then I had to explain why the animal’s wound showed no sign of cauterization, which surely would have occurred if a laser had been to blame.
That was when the culprit finally made itself known with a monstrous, animalistic cry, the likes of which I have never heard before or since. It probably would have been a relief if it had sounded like any animal I recognized since I remembered enough about surviving any encounter with potential large predators. The formula for surviving an encounter with bears, mountain lions, wolves, and moose is basically the same: stand your ground, make yourself look bigger, sing or shout at them to make yourself sound as little like their usual prey as possible, and back away slowly so as to not trigger their chasing instinct (and either fight back or lie in the fetal position to protect your vitals if they do attack).
But the sound uttered from this creature’s throat (or equivalent organ thereof) didn’t resemble any of the aforementioned animals. The best way I can describe it is like a little girl’s scream combined with the shriek of the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park and the metallic screech a steam locomotive makes when it engages its brakes. I also heard the sound of branches breaking within the cedar grove from around 150 yards away… and getting closer.
Not knowing whether or not I would have enough time to make a break for my house before the creature emerged from the woods and swept me away to God knows what kind of fate, I chose the best hiding spot I could find, that being a particularly thick Eastern white pine trunk, and stood there alone and afraid on the opposite side of the trunk from where the noises were coming from.
The cacophony suddenly ceased as the thing emerged from the cedars and seemingly halted as if trying to gain its bearings. It clearly hadn’t seen me as I rushed toward my hiding spot. I attempted to calm my racing mind and form a strategy to escape whatever was hunting me. To do that, however, I needed a better idea of what exactly it was that was stalking me, so I decided to risk a peek into the woods behind me, trying to make as little noise as possible as I turned to look.
The entity hovered in the air among the brightly colored leaves. It was entirely translucent, as I could clearly see branches waving behind the creature. Actually, “clearly” probably isn’t the right word, as the images from behind the beast were distorted in a similar manner to the Yautja cloaking devices from the Predator movies. Not helping this fact was that the creature’s “skin” seemed to shift its shape constantly in a kaleidoscope of geometric shapes, animalistic visages, and other images that I can’t even describe. Two parts of its anatomy remained static, however: the featureless, probing shape at the front, which I took to be its head, and the arms hanging below the neck, which resembled the scythe-like front limbs of a praying mantis. I noted the blood dripping off one of the bladed appendages, which could only have come from that unfortunate cardinal.
The semi-invisible monster uttered a harsh clicking sound that sounded like two pieces of firewood being knocked against one another, which I took to be a form of sonar. Or so I thought, for as I continued my observations of the beast, it suddenly uttered another shrieking cry and lunged at the brilliant leaves of a red maple tree, slashing wildly at the branches until it seemingly realized it wasn’t food and went back to investigating its surroundings.
That, and the memorably gruesome sight of the bisected cardinal, gave me something I could latch onto. For whatever reason, the creature seemed to react violently to the color red. Perhaps it had caught a glimpse of my red hoodie after it had inadvertently sent the dead cardinal flying in my direction but had lost sight of me in its efforts to break free of the tightly packed cedars. The beast likely wanted me for a meal, but what if I could trick it somehow?
Quickly scanning the forest floor, I was relieved to see a large stick lying on the ground just a few feet away from me. Once again, trying to make as little noise as possible, I slowly unzipped my hoodie and slipped it off my shoulders. Then I crouched low enough to grab the stick and hung the hoodie on the fat end. Then, I thrust the decoy out from behind the tree and wobbled the branch enough to make the jacket swing as if its owner was still occupying it.
The monster’s reaction was swift. It screeched again and slammed into the branch with enough force to rip it out of my hands and leave several bloody lacerations on my palms. It slashed and stabbed at the empty jacket for a few seconds before it realized there was no flesh and blood to be had. With one last terrifying shriek, this one being louder and angrier than the others, it shot off into the sky, its banshee cries fading in the distance. My dismembered hoodie drifted slowly back to earth and made landfall with a pathetic plop.
I remained rooted at the foot of that white pine for several minutes, still too unnerved by the experience to trust my surroundings. The woods were still deathly silent. Finally, though, a much different screech broke through the stillness. The raucous alarm call of a blue jay had never sounded sweeter. Gradually, the chickadee calls and kinglet songs faded back in as well. The danger had passed.
My adrenaline hardly faded, however, as I didn’t feel I would be totally out of danger until I reached the safety of home. I picked up my shredded hoodie and started walking back home along the edge of the cornfield. That is until a sudden sound of movement in the undergrowth beside me caused my fight or flight response to rapidly kick back in. I immediately booked it, likely leaving a very confused chipmunk or rabbit in my wake.
Naturally, my mind has been consumed ever since by trying to figure out what exactly that thing was that I encountered in those woods and where it came from. Was it an elemental spirit looking for revenge against the loggers and hunters who have unjustly stolen Mother Nature’s bounty one too many times? Was it an extradimensional intruder lashing out at its unfamiliar surroundings? Was it still out there somewhere, waiting for another helpless soul to stumble across it?
In my various Internet searches I’ve made trying to make sense of the incident, I’ve come across stories like the rash of five disappearances known as the “Patch Hollow Massacre” that occurred in Vermont’s so-called “Bennington Triangle” in the late 1940s, in which at least two victims, Paula Jean Welden and Paul Jepson, were said to be wearing red when they vanished. I’ve also become fascinated by reports of similar entities I’ve encountered while researching the “Missing 411” conspiracy theory. I’m not trying to say I believe everything Dave Paulides says about the cases he talks about. Still, my experience has left doubts about whether the supernatural causes he often implies are entirely absent.
In any case, while I haven’t given up my daily walks, I’ve preferred to stick to roads and fields where I can more easily keep in sight of my neighbors in case something goes wrong. I’ll leave it up to Rudy to decide when we return to the woods; after all, millions of years of evolutionary instinct can’t be wrong.
And even if there are creatures as monstrous as the one I encountered still lurking in our woods, I think it’s safe to assume that the odds of you encountering one of them are about as great as your encountering a bear or wolf, which is to say, pretty rare in the grand scheme of things.
Or maybe I’m just lying to myself, and everyone is in danger the minute they enter the trees…although I’m sure that’s always the case even without invisible murderous extradimensional terrors lurking around every corner.
Author’s Commentary
As I said in the disclaimer, this does not endorse the Missing 411 conspiracy theory. It is especially not meant to be an endorsement of David Paulides, as the man has been credibly accused of exaggerating aspects of the cases he examines to make them seem more mysterious than they actually are (see episode 794 of the Skeptoid podcast for a good summary of the problems with his theories). Also, a cursory look at his Twitter profile reveals him to be a big-time Trump supporter, which really detracts from his trustworthiness.
Still, I can’t deny that many of the supernatural stories associated with the conspiracy theory fascinate me, and I often wonder what hidden secrets may be lurking in the woods behind my house whenever I go on my own daily walks with my dog.
I should probably emphasize that THIS STORY IS FICTIONAL. I have never encountered anything even remotely similar to the creature I described in this story (or any large predators, for that matter). I felt I should make that clear in case any overly credulous Missing 411 devotee stumbles across this and tries to pass it off as me describing a genuine encounter with the supernatural.
That’s all I have to say about this one. Stay tuned on PrestonPosits for the upcoming “Cryptids of North America” entry on New Jersey, as well as the conclusion of my retrospectives on the Jurassic Park franchise and my favorite animations of 2023. Happy Halloween!
