In June 1993, I was camping in Wharton State Forest for a weekend of canoeing with my scout troop. We proceeded to have a bonfire and in the dying embers, decided to go to bed for the long day ahead. My tent was the furthest away from the rest of the troop, and unlike everyone else's tent, it faced away from the center of camp, towards the woods surrounding us. Around 3:30 - 4am, I was woken up by rustling in the bushes about 10 feet away from my tent. The tent cover was down, so that the only barrier between me and the outside was a mesh netting, which allowed for me to see directly outside of the tent. I peered over my sleeping bag only to see some kind of large animal standing in front of my tent, staring in. Normally, I'm not scared of something like this, but for some odd reason I felt a sense of shear terror and loneliness come over me, as if I was back in the dead of the woods in the days when most of the United States was still uninhabited. Whatever it was, it was large,
between 6 to 8 feet high, with orange-yellow eyes that seemed to burn into the back of my skull, and a set of wings unfurling and curling back up on its back. It appeared to have dark skin, somewhat like a fur. It seemed to have claws that hung out in front of the body, much like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. The belly ended a couple of feet above the ground, with two legs like that of a horse for which it stood on reaching the ground. I was lucky enough for there to be just enough light from the moon and from the dying fire to be able to make out what I did in the dark. The air around me became quite stagnant. I felt almost a paralyzation come over me, as if I could not react or move at all. After what seemed like hours, but was only a few seconds, I attempted to shake my friends awake and close the cover of the tent for fear that whatever it was, it was trying to get in. My flashlight was at the foot of my sleeping bag, but I made no attempt to reach for it, for fear that I would actually see
whatever it was for what it looked like in the light, or worse yet, give it more reason to attack. I finally closed the cover and hid inside my sleeping bag, praying that it would go away. I then heard what sounded like hooves walking over rocks and twigs, and a rustling in the bushes further over to the left of my tent, as if whatever it was was clambering away. I finally mustered up the courage to take a quick peek outside of the tent and saw nothing outside. The next morning, I checked the outside of my tent, where I had seen the "thing" and noticed a set of prints in the bushes, but nothing else in the vicinity of the tent nor the campsite. I did however, find the remains of a couple of small animals not too far from my campsite. The only other thing that ties in with this is that when we did do the canoeing, many of us felt a "prescence" that seemed to travel in the woods on the one side of the river with us, as if we were being stalked or followed.
This may sound a lot like many other stories, but I do have 20/20 eyesight, am a quick thinker and can react to a situation in a snap, but with this, I had nothing to rely on but my sight and inner dread. Also, there were other reports around the same time about there being something in the woods near a lot of other campsites, as we were told by the park rangers as they just so happened to have a "camp inspection" for no reason at all.
