Bel, Charley, Brian, Tony Colaco, and I headed back out to Batsto to get a better "daytime" feel of the area, perhaps for more future night hunts.

First, we decided we'd take our own little tour of Batsto Village. Only we paid less attention to the historic buildings (which were cool, don't get me wrong) and more attention to the huge network of trails throughout the area. We spent about an hour and a half hiking up and down these areas. The beginning of the trip was fairly uneventful - which I figured would happen, since people are constantly hiking up and down these trails. It wasn't until we veered off the regular paths that we found some good stuff to document.

The further away from the trails we got, the more and more strange prints we started to find. There were random holes and strange prints surrounding the trail, but usually staying off to the sides of the trail. At one point, the prints appeared as though they had hopped back and forth from side to side, almost as if they were purposely trying to avoid stepping on the trail itself.

Since the ground was still moist in certain areas (due to the recent warm weather melting the past week's snow), it was a good time to check out some of these prints. Many of the prints we found appeared to be deer-like, however they did not follow the typical paths of a normal deer. Some seemed almost bi-pedal. One of the tracks we found appeared almost as though it had two small claws on the very tip of the hoof itself.

Further down the trail, right before we ended up near one of the many branches of the Batsto River, we discovered a small clearing. In the center of the clearing was a large, muddy puddle. Surrounding this puddle was a circular path of hoof prints. It was odd to find them going around in a circle, but that's still physically explainable and possible. The odd thing about these tracks was that the "kick-up" from the feet appeared to be going in the opposite direction as they would normally go. For example, if someone walks or runs, the dirt from their steps will fly backwards. In these prints, the dirt appeared to go forwards. It's hard to see in the pictures, but check it out for yourself.

We headed back to the village, walked around the mansion for a little while, and laughed about some of the scenes from "The 13th Child". We then decided it was time for a break, and after re-fueling on some pizza, we decided to return to the place we had heard noises on Hunt #19. At this point, the sun was setting and it was dark again.

We started walking down the trail again, this time hearing some movement off to the right. For a little while, it sounded like something was actually playing in the water near us - we heard the regular noises of a running creek, and on top of that heard what sounded like the splashing of something large in the water itself. All the while, dogs were going insane, as usual.

After attempting to exit the woods, we noticed a police car on the outskirts of the area, so we decided to hang low for a little while in the woods. This seemed to take forever, but finally the car left and we could leave again. We headed back to the source of the noise from Hunt #19. It was much quieter, and even a little lighter outside. When we approached the wood's edge, we realized that we were going to need daylight to maneuver through the area well and decided against going forward into the area. I was disappointed. As we were reviewing the events from Hunt #19 in our heads, standing in the same areas, I realized a slight yet wierd difference... If you remember, I had said that Charley and I heard a noise from above us while I was kneeling down trying to take the picture of the strange tree. Once we heard the noise, we started to back up slowly while I was taking pictures. Tonight, when I was re-enacting the situation for Brian, as I was backing up I noticed a large amount of tree branches. Had they been there before, I definitely would have gotten tangled in them while backing up. But I didn't. So we got closer to check out these trees. For some reason, someone had apparently decided to trim them. The cuts were clean, definitely done by a person. But why? We have no idea why that particular tree would have been trimmed down, while all the rest hang overgrown in the area. The tree stands on the edge of a bed, and doesn't really lead to anything (no trail back there). So we're a little baffled as to why someone would choose to trim just those branches off of that tree.

After some general surveillance of the area, and another visit by the police (which went fairly painlessly), we decided to call it a night. We'll be back for more investigation another time...

Well, that's our story for Hunt #20. Questions? Comments? E-mail us at [email protected]. Want to join us? Click here for the online application!