Seven Mountains Strange: The Ingleby Monster

Location where the group of us had the strange experience,
Near Raven's Knob in the Seven Mountains

While I often talk about the mysterious and unexplained, I find it hard to share my personal experiences with the world. I've always tried to disprove any story about ghosts and hauntings, so when something strange occurs that I cannot explain, it confuses me greatly.

The story I'm about to share with you happened in the fall of 1998, a story that happened to myself and three of my coworkers at the time. Before ghost hunting was a big thing on the tv, we had set out on countless adventures to the local haunts, trying to prove or disprove them. Most often we had a laugh about the stories and merely went on our way. However, it was on one adventure, an adventure that was not originally about ghosts, that we had our strangest encounter; none of us really ever talked about it after the events of that day. As far as I'm aware, none of the other three ever publicly told this story and seeing I haven't talked to any of them in over ten years, I feel that I can finally share the story of that day.

The leaves were changing on the trees as we set out for a day of traveling through the Seven Mountains. We had visited Ingleby (a remote village near Coburn) and the Coburn train tunnel, followed by the Poe Paddy train tunnel before heading to the overlooks on Poe Mountain. We had a lunch packed and we stopped at the Raven's Knob Vista to enjoy lunch.

I'm not easily unnerved, but the longer we sat there eating, the more the feeling of unease effected my nerves. Though none said it at the time, we were all feeling the same. Finally one of the others swore and asked if any of us felt like we were being watched. We all agreed that it felt like someone or something was watching us. Looking around the mostly open woods we failed to find what was causing our fear.

By this time we were ready to leave. We rapidly gathered everything up and didn't bother to pack it; we were throwing stuff in the back of the vehicle just so we could get out of there as quickly as possible.

Before we could get out of the area, we all froze in place. The tension in the air and the fear we shared seemed to freeze us in place. Near the spot we stopped was an old road that lead down into the forest; something drew our attention towards the road that disappeared into the woods. I can't say that I saw anything, but something had my attention. As we all stared helplessly down that old logging road, we heard it.

Somewhere down that road, something was running towards us. The steady sound of footsteps running towards us was sending our group into overdrive; our hearts were racing and a cold sweat running. It was getting closer and closer yet we still could not see a thing. As loud as the steps were, we should have seen something and we all knew whatever it was, it was going to be upon us in seconds.

When the footsteps reached the open area, they stopped and a cold breeze blew past us. When I say cold, I mean it colder than anything I've ever experienced in my life. It was cold enough that it hurt when it blew past us. Then on the other side of the clearing, we heard the steps running away from us. We all stood there until we couldn't hear them anymore.

Once the sound of the footsteps disappeared into the forest, the spell that held us there was broken. None of us spoke a word as we scrambled in fear into the vehicle and took off like our lives depended on it. None of us spoke about it on the way home (our adventure was officially over for the day). It would be a couple days before we could really talk about what happened that day.

All four of us agreed on the events that day and none of us could come up with an explanation for what we experienced in the mountains that day. The fact that something did happen was pretty much the end of our exploring haunted places. We all drifted our separate ways soon after without ever saying another word about the events of that day. The events affected me so much that I avoided the area for years; it has only been in the last year or two that I finally ventured back up to the overlooks. Thankfully, nothing happened in recent trips back.

That day has never left me. I love sharing ghost stories and folklore with others, but this one I kept to myself. Who would ever believe me?

I was given a copy of Jeffrey Frazier's newest book and as I was reading the story of the Ingleby monster, I realized that the story he related in there was similar to the event we experienced. In fact, the events in his story and what I experienced were a little over a mile apart. Was it the Ingleby monster that we encountered that day? I will probably never know exactly what happened that day though it remains as fresh in my memory today as it did all those years ago.