Zachary Miller (2:31)
When an American soldier finds himself at the middle of a centuries old legend, he comes face to face with evil itself. Will he make it out alive? Find out on this episode of Sightings. My name is Zachary Miller, but most people just call me Zach and in 1988, I was 22 years old and stationed at Hahn Air Force Base in West Germany. It was the final days of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall hadn't fallen yet, but you could feel change in the air. You could feel it. The whole base had this electric feeling, like we were on the cusp of something historic. And yeah, I guess you could say something historic did indeed happen to me. If by historic you mean absolutely freaking terrifying. It happened on a Friday night in late summer. Me and three buddies from the base, Carl, Jamie, and Bert, had dinner at this little tavern in Morbach that we discovered a few months earlier. The owners spoke decent English, and they had this schnitzel that was out of this world. So good. Plus beer. Lots of good German beer. Of course. Carl wanted another round, but I was driving and had my shift in a few hours. The guys ragged me, but someone had to stay sober, and it sure as hell wasn't going to be any of them. But by the time we left, all three of my friends were feeling pretty good. Not falling down drunk, but definitely loose. We were about halfway back to the base when Carl started squirming in his seat, and he asked me to pull over because he needed to take a leak. I told him we'd be back at base soon, but he insisted he couldn't hold it. Then Jamie and Bert chimed in that they needed to go, too. Funny how that works. So I pulled the truck over to the side of the road, killed the engine, and the guys stumbled into the dense forest that loomed around us. I waited by the truck, thinking about the shift ahead, when I heard Jamie calling out from somewhere in the trees. He sounded confused, maybe even worried, so I followed his voice, pushing through branches until I found him standing at a crossroads of two dirt paths. And there, tucked away in the middle of the forest, was this little structure. A small stone thing, maybe five feet tall, with this little alcove that had a weathered image of the Virgin Mary set into it. And beneath that was a small shelf holding a few candles that looked recently burned out, given the thin wisps of smoke still rising from their black wicks. It was some kind of shrine. That's the only word for it. But why out here in the middle of the forest? And the thing looked ancient. Centuries old, at least. But clearly someone had been taking care of it. Someone had been lighting those candles, but who? Carl and Bert soon found us, and we all stood there, staring at this odd little monument for a long time. Then I asked if anyone had a lighter, and all Three of them looked at me like I'd grown a second head. Jamie made a snark about religion, and truth is, I wasn't religious at all. But I knew better than to mess with stuff like this. You never knew when someone might take offense. Plus, when there's candles involved, they're supposed to be lit, right? So the guys rummaged in their pockets, but everyone came up empty. I thought I might have a lighter in the truck, but Jamie groaned. He wanted to get back to base and get to bed, and the other guys agreed, and facing a losing battle, I relented. We went back to the truck. I started the engine, and we left those candles unlit in those dark woods. But looking back, I wish I'd trusted my instincts. My shift started normal enough, and for a while, it was a normal night at Han. Most of the action happened during the day, when the F16s were running sorties. At night, the base was pretty dead. But all of that changed right after midnight. The radio crackled to life with garbage reporting a disturbance in the woods southwest of the perimeter fence. I asked what kind of disturbance, and the voice on the radio said they weren't sure. They'd heard some screaming, then something moving in the brush, something big. I looked to Sergeant Peters, who was on duty with me, and he nodded. So I responded that backup was on the way, which pretty much meant that I was on the way, along with a few other airmen who happened to be present at the time. Sanders and Martinez, they were guys I trusted. Both had been on the force long enough to know what they were doing, and neither was prone to spooking at shadows. But the moment we crossed into those trees, something felt off. The air was too still, too quiet. I tried to suck it up, but as my flashlight beam cut through the mist and the trees, it created these weird shadows that seemed to move when we weren't looking directly at them. Sanders seemed to notice it, too, when he was from Tennessee, someone who'd spent basically his whole life in the woods. But he kept looking over his shoulder as if he thought someone was following us. Meanwhile, Martinez was quiet, unusually quiet for him. But we were soldiers, so we pressed on. And then we stumbled upon the most horrifying sight I think I'd ever seen. I first noticed it when the ground squished beneath my feet. I looked and quickly realized I was standing in a pool of blood. Ahead of us, three dead deer lied scattered on the ground. Or I assumed they were deer because there wasn't much left of them. They'd been Torn apart like nothing I'd seen before. Their throats ripped open, their bellies splayed wide. Ugh, the stench. It was awful. Just awful. Worse. Something had clearly been digging through their insides, feeding on them, eating them. Sanders muttered under his breath and gagged, but I knelt down for a closer look, fighting the urge to vomit myself. Whatever had done this hadn't just killed the deer. It had savaged them, made sport of it. Martinez suggested it might be wild dogs or maybe a boar, but I could tell from his voice he didn't believe it. But I had to report what I found, even if I couldn't explain it. So I pulled out my radio. But the moment before I started to talk, we heard it. A deep, guttural growl coming from the brush to our left. All of us froze, and I heard Sanders whisper, asking, what the hell was that? Because, honestly, it was like nothing I'd ever heard before. I slowly raised my flashlight, trying to spot whatever might be making that sound. But then this massive shape suddenly erupted from the darkness, moving faster than anything that size had any right to move. I only caught a glimpse of it, but what I saw didn't make sense because it was huge, bear sized, at least. But it moved all wrong, like it wasn't an animal at all. Then my survival instincts kicked in, and I ran after Sanders and Martinez. Back at base, I reported what we'd found to our superior, Lieutenant Reeves. And when I told him it was a bear or something bigger, he scoffed. Bears hadn't been seen in this part of Germany for more than a century, apparently. But I knew what I'd seen. And given those mutilated deer, the strange sounds in the woods, something was clearly out there. So I requested permission to head back into the woods, this time with a canine unit. I don't know, maybe that was stupid. Maybe I just figured if something dangerous was out there, the dogs would find it. But as soon as we reached the tree line, something strange happened. These were highly trained German Shepherds, but they flat out refused to enter those woods. They pulled against their leads, whining and backing away like they'd seen something that terrified them. But I wasn't about to let this go. I don't know. I've always been kind of stubborn and duty bound. So I pushed ahead alone. And soon enough, I saw these huge dog like prints in the soil. But as I looked closer, I realized this was no dog I'd ever seen in my life. They were too deep, like whatever was making them was incredibly heavy. And the stride length was all wrong, like it was walking on two legs instead of four. And as I followed the tracks, I found another deer carcass. And as if it was even possible, this one was even worse than the others. It wasn't just killed, it had been destroyed, like whatever killed it had a personal vendetta against the poor creature. But just as I bent to examine the carnage, I heard that growl again, this time much closer than before. So I spun around, my flashlight beam cutting the darkness, and for a split second, I swear, just a split second, I saw it. A tall shadow standing upright between the trees, taller than any bear, taller than any man. I dropped my radio and ran mindlessly, as fast as I could. Behind me, something roared, a sound that shook the trees and rattled me to my core. But thank God it was behind me. I just kept running, branches whipping my face, roots trying to trip me up. And I could hear it behind me, getting closer, the sound of its breathing, the snap of branches under its weight. I veered to the left, hoping to lose it in the denser part of the forest. My lungs burned and my legs felt like lead, but pure terror kept me moving. Then suddenly, something grabbed me and yanked me behind a tree, and I found myself face to face with a man, German, maybe 40, who pressed his finger to his lips, his eyes wide with terror as he whispered for me to be absolutely silent. Don't move. Don't breathe, or you'll be dead.
