WHAT WAS THAT THING?

This happened in the fall of 1983 after I had graduated from High School. (You do the math-I'm in my early 40s) The particular place in New Mexico where this incident took place was Los Alamos. Are you familiar with the town? My father worked there at the National Laboratory as a researcher and I finished my senior year there.

I have to say as an aside, from the first day we arrived in Los Alamos, there was a very subtle very, weird vibe up there that I detected that occasionally someone else would admit they felt also. To this day I have no idea if I was onto something or it was just a figment of my imagination.

At any rate, one evening in October of that year, my buddy Matthew and I were hanging out at the local teen hang-out, a pizzeria named "Big Cheese Pizza." It was in the shopping center on the hill behind the Hilltop House Hotel, owned by the Waterman family and has since gone out of business. Dan Hammer was the manager, not sure where he ended up.

Anyway so around 10 pm Dan good naturedly kicked us out and me and Matthew walked a couple miles up town to his quad where him and his dad lived. Their quad was at the base of the Barranca Mesa on ...... I can't remember the name of the street! Was a common girls name. Oh well. Anyway so we were kinda just wandering the streets like we would do hoping some girls we knew who cruised a lot would notice us and give us a ride.

Then around midnight we were on the edge of town by his house and thats when it happened. Right in some brush about 50 feet from us we heard the most god awful screech!

We both looked wide eyed at each other and simultaneously asked " what the hell was that??"

Aileen to this day I can't describe that sound, but at the risk of sounding like a nutcase it sounded demonic. We were instantly both scared. And we took off running! And as we ran I turned to see this unreal sight: right out of the brush came this thing. It had a a big bushy head on a long lanky frame. I couldnt make out any detail because it was so dark but what I saw in the outline of what the streetlights were showing was more than enough! And it was running after us!

We sprinted like maniacs to the nearest sanctuary: a playground. We scampered up the tower of a slide (you know the type: you climb the ladder inside a tube to the top where you then slide down) and cowered up on top. This thing attempted to climb up after us but couldnt fit!

It growled and howled and clawed. I thought any second some people in the surrounding houses would call the cops. Then this thing suddenly galloped off and no one came out to check on us!!

Me and Matthew spent the rest of the night up on top of that slide and didn't leave till sun up!

To this day I wonder if somehow me and Matthew had imagined the whole incident but I don't see how. Neither one of us was a drug user and although we liked to get buzzed on beer regularly that night we hadn't had a drop to drink.

As an addendum: Years later while I was visiting my dad up there I shared this tale with two older gentlemen in a gas station in Sante Fe. One was Native American and the other was Mexican American with deep roots there in the area. They got into a heated argument over what me and my buddy experienced. The Native America thought it was a Skinwalker, the Hispanic gentleman thought it was a Chupacabra.
Pretty wild huh?