Back in February, we received a sighting report from an Egg Harbor woman who had recently encountered a strange creature in her backyard. We contacted her shortly thereafter, and set up plans to investigate the area where the sighting took place and to talk to her directly about what happened on the night of February 18th, 2004... So Bel, Charley, Brian, and I grabbed the gear and met up at the location where the event had occurred.

When we arrived at the house, we knew it was the perfect location for a sighting. The environment was very believable for a sighting. Laurie's property borders on acres of woods on multiple sides, so the entire area is enveloped in trees. The houses are not too close together, and the roads are small local roads that don't seem to get all that busy. We were greeted by Laurie's husband and son (who was the original witness of the creature), and we headed to the back of the house, where the events had occurred.

Some of the striking things that Laurie showed us were two huge propane tanks and a metal shed in their backyard. She said that on several occasions, they have heard what sounded like something standing on the metal shed, almost as though it was stomping or dancing on it. We thought that description had uncanny similarities to the Nelson Evans' sighting of 1909. Unfortunately, they hadn't seen what had been making the noise on the metal shed. In another occasion, something lifted the large lids off of the top of the propane tanks (which were probably about 4 1/2 - 5 feet tall) and started to bang them down again. Upon investigation, I did find large sets of parallel scratches on the lids.

After Laurie and her son gave us the "play-by-play" of the sighting, showing us exactly where they were standing, where they had seen or heard the creature, and so on and so forth, we headed inside and invaded the family's house for a little filming. Brian had brought an impressive amount of film equipment this time - he had his lights, gels, microphones, and all sorts of interesting things to make our recording of their sighting as good as we can. Once all the equipment was set up, Laurie and her son sat down in front of the camera and basically recapped the story to us again. It was great. This is the kind of footage that will be making it into our documentary once we make one.

After the filming, we did a little more investigation in the backyard. Unfortunately, we didn't find anything in the way of good concrete evidence. We did find a large area of trees that were knocked down but leaning out to different sides, almost as if they'd been pushed over. The woods did get very thick behind the house. There were scratches all throughout the trees, and many of them were cracked in half unnaturally (but roughly, not with the use of a blade).

So here's what we think of the sighting after our investigation:
I know that many people have doubts when it comes to sightings reports. But this family has convinced us that something definitely happened at their house that night. Laurie repeated the story to us several times, via e-mail and in person, and the story has never changed. Her son also confirmed the story. There were no inconsistencies or flaws in what they said. After the event happened, Laurie's husband went out into the yard the next morning to look around. He found the roof covered in footprints (due to a large snowstorm, the prints had been preserved in the snow). Even the trails of the prints are consistent with the events that happened. Local authorities were called in to investigate these events as well, and they were unable to identify what could have made these marks. This was a well spoken family, with no reason to lie or make up a story. Something definitely happened out there!

Here are some of the photographs taken the morning after the sighting by the family:

We will continue to follow up with this family to find out if anything else happens in this area. They have said that they've heard something heavy on their roof several times since the sighting took place, but were unable to identify the source of the noise. They were very hospitable, and offered us the opportunity to come perform follow up research in their area. Hopefully, we'll plan an overnight investigation in the future, and possibly get some strange events recorded. We'll keep you updated!

Well, that's our story for Hunt #27. Questions? Comments? E-mail us at [email protected]. Want to join us? Click here for the online application!