In the Virginia mountains, roads go directly through mountains, via tunnels dug through them. Last year, I was travelling from Florida up to the Midwest, and took the route that took me through the aforementioned Virginia mountains. The trip went fine until I got there. Normally, I found myself driving either alone or with one or two other cars on the road. At one point, though, traffic became heavy.

 

I was in a line of cars approaching a tunnel. It was moving slow due to some unseen obstruction ahead. I entered the tunnel and crept along slowly with the rest of the cars, before coming to a stop. The westbound road was at a standstill, while the eastbound road was wide open with no cars heading in that direction. I was almost dead-center of the tunnel, just for reference. Lights lined the walls of the tunnel, illuminating everything within. Until they didn’t. The lights all simultaneously shut off, making it quite dark in the tunnel.

 

Sunlight was the only source of light in the tunnel now, but it only reached so far from each entrance to the tunnel. Me being in the middle, I was essentially in the dark. A car a few behind me pulled onto the eastbound side and sped ahead of the rest of us that were stopped. I redirected my attention to him, and watched him drive the rest of the way down the tunnel, and when he reached the end, all the sunlight coming from that end of the tunnel was suddenly sucked out of existence, and the car disappeared. All I could see at that end of the tunnel was pure darkness. I looked behind me and saw cars starting to turn around, but shortly after, a wave of darkness fell over the entrance through which I’d driven just minutes before.

 

I heard random screams from either end of the tunnel. The only thing giving off light in the tunnel now was all the car’s headlights, but even those seemed somehow dimmer than they should have. In all, it was like being in a pitch black room with only a candle across the room giving off any kind of glow.

 

I opened my door in preparation to get out and see what was going on, but just as it was open all the way, something flew past and slammed it shut, surely denting it in the process. Whatever it was, it went by so fast that I didn’t see it, and its path was interrupted by my car door. I tried looking behind me to see what it was, and saw the vague outline of something BIG heading down the road behind me. The person in front of me got out of their car and looked in both directions. Suddenly, that same something that flew past my door flew back the other way, and took the man in front of me with him. All I heard was his scream trail off in the distance.

 

At this point, I was thoroughly frightened. I didn’t know what to do. I heard screams coming from whatever the direction that…thing was coming from at the time. I needed to figure out what it was in order to figure out how to deal with it and protect myself. I snuck out the passenger’s side door of my car and crawled to the car in front of me. I then entered through the passenger’s side door of *that* car and got into the driver’s seat. The thing made a few passes back and forth as I waited for a moment, and the second it passed by heading westbound, I pulled the car into the middle of the road and hurriedly got out, running back to my car and getting in safely.

 

The thing made its pass back eastbound and slammed into the car, crumpling it almost in half. But more importantly than that, it stopped, and even in the dim lights being projected from my car, I finally got a good look at it.

 

Whatever this thing was, it barely fit on the other lane of the tunnel. I would say that it was probably 15 feet long, and had to have been another 15 feet feet around in a cylindrical shape; it looked like a floating millipede, only without so many legs. It had tendrils coming off of its body in random places that seemed to wave in the air behind it as it sped by. I realized that it was in fact on the ground and not flying like I had previously thought; it was just moving so fast that I couldn’t see it touching the road beneath it. It looked wet, as if it was covered in some sort of fine slime, and I don’t know how I hadn’t realized up to that point that it was digging into the ground beneath it with each pass, and in the rubble, leaving a trail of moisture behind it.

 

Its face was flat. It had four lidless, colorless eyes; just black spheres set deep inside the sockets that housed them. There were three small holes under the eyes that I presume were nostrils. The mouth, though, was the most horrifying thing about it. Its mouth was a perfect circle that closed from both the top and bottom, but it had three full circular sets of razor-sharp teeth, that by this point, were coated in blood. Its entire face had blood splattered on it and glass sticking out of it, evidence of the carnage it was employing on either end of the tunnel, surely making its way to the middle, where I was. I can only guess that there was another face on the other side, because this thing would’ve had no room to make a turn to head back in the opposite direction, and damage was being done on both ends of the tunnel.

 

Hitting the car only stopped it for a few moments. It nudged the car aside, into a car only a few behind mine, and went back on its way. I could tell it was getting closer to the middle, because the times between its passings were getting shorter and shorter, and the screams were getting louder. Someone ahead of me got out of their car brandishing a pistol when the thing was heading east, and waited for it to come back. He got off two shots that seemed to do absolutely nothing to the thing, and even in the very dim light I saw the man’s blood spray in every direction as his scream was quickly suppressed.

 

If I hadn’t been panicking before, I certainly was at this point. This thing was getting closer and closer, and I had literally nowhere to go. Both directions were closed off and even if they weren’t, there would be no way for me to get to either of the ends without first being ravaged by this…thing.

 

Suddenly, there was a deafening screech that echoed throughout the enclosed tunnel. It got louder and louder until the sound was literally so loud I couldn’t see anything anymore; everything began vibrating. And then, as suddenly as it started, the sound stopped. I opened my eyes and saw sunlight ahead of me. I turned around and saw it behind me as well. In addition, the tunnel lights had gotten their power back. What I didn’t see, was a large cylindrical monster that was making passes back and forth, eviscerating human beings. It was simply gone.  As a result of the light returning, I saw the carnage left behind by the unexplainable creature.

 

Everything beyond about three car lengths from me in either direction was absolutely destroyed. Cars were split in half, bodies were in pieces, blood and viscera lined the street and walls of the tunnel. The eastbound side of the road was dug up about three feet down from the thing going back and forth. I got out of my car and walked to meet the other survivors. No one could believe what they’d just seen.

 

The police and ambulances came, news crews, helicopters, the whole shebang. Everyone gave their statements, which all came out nearly identical. Men in black suits came by and spoke to us one by one, marking things down on a clipboard, then had us sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for money. The story on the news was a truck carrying hazardous material had crashed and spilled, destroying the road and taking many casualties along with it. It was all bullshit.

 

I know what happened that day, and I don’t care about a non-disclosure agreement. If they’re going to come for me, let them. At least now other people know. There is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, shit out there that’s being kept with us. And it’s dangerous.