So we just got back from this little mini-vacation, and I wanted to get this written down (typed out) while it’s still fresh in my mind, not that it’s like to go away any time soon.

Myself, my wife Kimmy, and our friends Ryan and Alyssa (also a couple) decided to go on a little trip up north from where we live (big midwest city). Alyssa’s dad bought a cabin a few years ago intending on eventually moving up there, but unfortunately her mom got sick and it’s gone unused. Alyssa thought some time away from everything would be nice and invited Kimmy and I to join, which we gladly accepted.

We made the four hour trip to the town the cabin is in, Long Lake. When they said “cabin”, I was expecting a little rundown cottage in the middle of the woods, and while in the middle of the woods it was, it was anything but a rundown cottage. A long path through the woods that dips down before rising again leads to the structure, which is two floors. There is a bit of land surrounding the cabin on all sides,and dense woods for as far as the eye can see past that. The backyard has a firepit dug into the ground out a short distance, and lining the sliding back door is a patio set.

The inside is very open, with the living room connecting to the kitchen connecting to the dining room, and a hallway that has the downstairs bathroom and a bedroom that was completely empty. The stairs lead up to a loft that overlooks the living room, set up kind of like a den, and then opposite that is a hallway with another bathroom and two more bedrooms. We each took an upstairs bedroom and got our stuff situated, and while Kimmy and Alyssa kind of made the place feel a little more “homey”, Ryan and I went outside to chop some firewood.

The first odd thing happened when we were all out back having a fire. It had been completely dark for about a half hour when we were just sitting around the firepit talking, and all of the sudden, as in seemingly completely out of nowhere, the fire just…exploded. That sounds dramatic but it’s really the only way I can think of to describe it. A million little glowing orange embers popped out and floated up, the wood that had been strategically stacked was now a structureless pile. We all kind of let out exclamations, and weren’t really sure what had happened, but then the loudest, most pained squawking any of us had ever heard started ringing out and something in the middle of the fire started flailing about.

It was a crow. It didn’t take long for it to die, since basically as soon as it hit the fire it was engulfed in flames (also why none of really tried to get it out). It was bizarre. It was like the bird had just nosedived straight down into the fire. We sat around the fire for a while longer with no other issues, and we went to bed around midnight.

All four of us were woken up at just after 3:30am by a loud clap of thunder. It was weird not only because there was no call for rain during the days we were supposed to be there, but because the rain was coming down *hard*, like torrentially hard, and once we were awake we couldn’t *not* hear it, but none of us had heard it until that clap of thunder. Kimmy and I had gotten out of bed when we heard Alyssa and Ryan’s door open, and I looked out the window that faced the backyard and in the short time it had been raining, it had turned the backyard into a swamp.

The four of us went downstairs to hang out until the storm passed, because the rain was coming down so forcefully it was seriously too loud to sleep through. By the end of it, the area around the car was just pure mud, and the road that leads to the cabin, the one with the dip, was flooded, effectively stranding us there. This freaked us out a bit at first, but then it occurred to us that we were planning on being there for a few more days anyways, and that by the time we were planning on leaving it likely wouldn’t a problem anymore.

We spent the day just hanging around the house, and shortly after we’d gone to bed that second night, we’re again woken up by a clap of thunder, but about 10 seconds after that, Kimmy and I hear Alyssa scream from the other room. We run out of our room and into theirs to see what’s going on, and Alyssa is curled on to Ryan on the bed, visibly afraid. She tells us that someone is outside by the trees. Kimmy and I rushed to the window to look, but there was no one in sight. We tried to reason with her that it was probably as animal, but she was really shaken up.

So the rain once again keeps us up, and we once again go downstairs to wait out the noisy storm. After about an hour, Alyssa had calmed down a bit, but then we hear a scratching at the front door. It wasn’t a threatening sound, more just like if a small dog was trying to let its owner know it was ready to come back inside. Then the chittering started, and we surmised it must have just been a raccoon or some similar animal, though why it would be trying to get in was beyond us.

After a few minutes, Ryan got up to shoo it away, but I had the worst feeling about the entire situation. In no uncertain terms I told him not to open the door. He thought I was crazy for being so adamant about it, but he obliged. I think my attitude put the girls on edge too.

The scratching and chittering went on for another almost two hours. Then it suddenly just stopped. What followed was a *sigh*, an exasperated, annoyed *sigh*, and then heavy footsteps walking across the wooden porch. The entire length of the front of the house has a very nice porch with two windows looking out on it. Whatever was scratching at the door stood taller than those windows, and did a weird kind of jerky walk, almost a limp, across the porch, the silhouette of which we watched move across and then leap over the side out of our view.

It was then (obviously) that we knew that something was seriously wrong. Cell phones don’t get any service up there, and Alyssa’s parents had never set up a landline, so we picked a room to all huddle into until daylight came, and that was Ryan and Alyssa’s room. I know, being on the second floor is a rookie mistake, a horror movie cliche, but the only room with a door on the first floor was the completely empty bedroom, and we all agreed that being in there would’ve just left us vulnerable, so we took the chance. Also, how was anything going to get to the second floor from outside, right?

Wrong. After about 45 minutes, as we were all just sitting in the room with the lights and the TV on, Kimmy let out a scream of “oh my god!” and pointed at the window. Upside down, as if it were hanging from the roof by its feet, was…something. We could really only see the face, but obviously it was connected to a body. But the face…it was like someone had been blindfolded and drawn a face.

The eyes were like three times as large as a normal person’s, and took up most of the forehead. The nose was pinched and small, and the mouth seemed to literally stretch from ear to ear. It had a somewhat angry if not blank look on its face, and it seemed to be panting. My recollection of it could very well be skewed, as I was quite afraid and only saw it for maybe two or three seconds, but all four of us described it similarly when we talked about it after the fact.

Ryan yelled out “what the fuck”?! and the thing screeched and bashed its head against the window, hard enough to crack it. Then it pulled itself up and we heard footsteps going back and forth across the roof. That went on for about an hour, and we all sat there with our eyes glued to the window. Eventually, we heard the footsteps go to the edge of the roof and stop. From where I was sitting I could look up and just barely see the spot at which they’d stopped, and I saw a shape in the rain perched on the edge. I nudged Ryan and he looked too, and we watched as it jumped down to the ground and scurried on all fours to the woods on the side of the house.

For the next several hours, until daylight, whatever that thing was spent its time climbing up trees and staring at us, standing at the edge of the woods and staring at us, and sprinting on all fours to the ground right below the window and staring at us before going back to the treeline. As the sun rose, the rain stopped. We had all of our stuff packed, and for about 45 minutes we worked at getting the car unlodged from the muddy valley the driveway had become. As we were driving away, the ground became dry only about 75 yards from the house, and from that point on it was as if no rain had fallen.

I know that was a rather uneventful ending, but that’s how it happened. All I know is that we won’t be going back to Long Lake.