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SammyTerry, Hazard, Kentucky, Early 1930s
My aunt Zella, who was really religious and had no reason to make this up,
told me of this time when she was just a little girl of about 6 years old.
They were a poor coal mining family living in the hills of Kentucky in a
small home with an outhouse in the backyard. There was this one time late at
night/early morning when she woke up needing to potty. She walked through
the living room to get to the kitchen back door and in the main room in
front of the fireplace lying there was what she thought was a dog. The "dog"
watched her as she hurried across the room to go out. This only startled her
at first because they didn't have a house dog. Thinking she just imagined it
in the dim light, she finished her potty and this time slowly walked through
so she might see it better... well, she then wished she didn't.
The "dog" was still there in front of the fireplace (that wasn't lit). She
said its body looked like a hound dog or something like that, but its face
was almost human-like and it had what she thought might be small horns on
its forehead above its eyes. It did have a long dog-like snout that she
swears was grinning at her with its long fangs showing while its devil-like
tail was slowly wagging.
She was paralyzed with fear until she let out a scream and was finally able
to run back to bed which she had to share with her younger brothers. She
tried to wake them but they wouldn't wake up. She stayed under the covers
between the two and finally fell back to sleep. Many days later she told
them about it and of course they laughed and said she just had a bad dream
-- after all, she was only about 6 or 7 years old when it happened and it
was hard for her to explain it with that much detail at that age. But she
swore that it was real and she could never forget what she saw that night.
It was a long time before she would go to the outhouse at night by herself
again.
This was just the first of many terrifying incidents her family would
experience.
