OUR UNSEEN NEIGHBORS (part 2)
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| Orb on the tracks |
I remembered the old timers talking about seeing glowing lights on occasion while 'coon hunting. People called them Jack O' Lanterns, or The Will O' The Wisp, but said they were really only swamp gas. Being sixteen, and rather wiry at the time, I wasn't really worried too much, thinking "whatever it is, it doesn't want to mess with me' (stupid kid).
With discretion being the better part of valor, I turned and began to step out faster toward the car. I was still too far away. I needed to get around the bend in the tracks before I could even hope to see the car, even in the daylight.
Several minutes went by as I walked and it had gotten too dark to see anything. I had no light, but I was sure I had walked around the bend and even further for some distance.
There was no moon visible, but there were a lot of stars out. In a short while it looked as if I was coming up on something in the dark. I could barely see anything at all. However, it turned out to be my old Ford.
I put my hand out and felt for the door handle as I turned to see if the light was still following me, expecting to see it back a quarter mile or so near the bend.
I was shocked to see the thing no more than thirty feet away! It just hung there about six or seven feet off of the ground. It swayed back and forth two or three times then went out before I could even get the door open. I was convinced that I had been followed up the tracks by something intelligent, but I never got to see what it really was. Was it one of our unseen neighbor's?
In conclusion, I will repeat an earlier paragraph from part 1 of this same experience.
Here it is: "Emanuel Swedenborg speaks of people gravitating either toward, or away from, one another in the afterlife depending on whether they have similar likes and dislikes. Having traveled to another dimension in spirit, he relays the time he was talking with some local spirits when the air near them began to glow and then it began to take on the form of a face. As it progressed, the rest of the body started to come into view. However, the entering spirit entity soon realized it didn't meld well with those particular spirit beings, so instead of manifesting in their presence to make contact with them, it faded back out of view and simply returned to the locale where it had come from. (Sound familiar to any Sasquatch hunters out there?)"
To learn more about Emanuel Swedenborg click the follwing links: LINK 1, LINK 2.
Also, see the right hand column of this page.
2. SOMETHING BIG IN THE BEECHES - In the fall of 1970 my brother and I decided we would go squirrel hunting in a remote set of woods bordered on one side by a large tract of abandoned farm l
and. An old building we called the apple
shed was being reclaimed to the earth by the relentless
heavy hand of
gravity. It stood in the midst of an immense field of blackberry
briars which reached upward more than a yard above our heads.
Putting our backs
to the truck we had parked in a field near what used to be
an old lane leading to the apple shed, we walked on. Reaching the shed, we pressed on through the barrier of briars that led eastward toward the Monongahela River. The briar field was the final resting place of what once was a thriving orchard on the hill top above the woods we referred to simply as the Beeches.
As a huge valley leading downhill toward the river away from the briars, it was populated with old growth beech, oak, poplar, maple and other hardwood species. Had it been spring or summer I would've expected to hear the solitary song of the Wood Thrush. But, it was autumn and we had to hurry. The sun was going down fast.
After fighting our way
toward the trees, we
quickly walked away from each other in a “V” shape as we entered the trees so as to separate quickly. We hoped we might have maybe 45 minutes lef t to hunt while letting the woods quiet down.
We usually used .22 caliber rifles to hunt squirrels, but this time we both carried a Ruger .22 magnum caliber pistol for squirrel and a single barrel 20 gauge shotgun for grouse.
We
called it the Beeches; and it did have a lot of Beech trees in it,
but there were many other hardwoods also. It had many banks and
ravines leading away and slightly downward as we walked in, all
covered in leaves and really old dead logs.
I used up ten minutes walking very slowly before sitting down on an inviting log. To my right, the log continued on into an under story of huckleberry, dogwood, red bud and other bushes.
I could hear a squirrel in the leaves just over the bank in front of me, but I couldn't tell if it was working it's way towards me or away from me.
Then a motion in my peripheral vision on my
right side, caught my attention. A Ruffed Grouse had gotten onto the log back in the bushes and now it was wobbling it's way towards me on legs drunken by too many fermented wild grapes.
I drew a bead on him with the 20 gauge but didn't shoot. I relaxed the hammer and lowered the shotgun thinking, "If a hunter gets a grouse on the wing, he surely deserves it. But shooting a drunken one while walking on a log just isn't right".
I was thinking this over when back up through the woods behind me something let out a warhoop that would startle a moose!
Instinctively I whirled around to see what on earth it was. The trees at the top of the woods
where we first entered the beeches were silhouetted against a twilight sky. One tree in the midst of the rest was swaying violently from side to side. Something big was pushing and pulling it back and forth.
"What is that!", I wondered.
Just then, my brother, who had been working his way back toward me asked, "What the heck
was that?"
"I don't know", I said, "What do you think it was?"
Shaking his head from side to side as he walked up to me, he said, "I'd have to say a bear, but I don't think even a bear could make a noise as loud as that was".
He was too far to my left to get a look at what I saw, but I saw it. It did look closer to a bear than anything else I could think of. It was bigger than any man I ever saw and strong enough to sway the crown of a twenty five foot tall locust tree back back and forth ten or fifteen feet. I looked for the tree to snap off.
Through the following 40 years I just considered it was a bear not desiring to pursue it any further , however, I did wonder how a bear could pull a tree back as violently as it had pushed it. Their paws aren't designed for pulling like a hand is.
In order to get back to the truck we had to leave the woods directly through the locust grove at the top exactly where the tree had been shaking so violently. However, whatever had been shaking it had simply disappeared. A squirrel can be heard running away, but why couldn't something bigger than a bear be heard? That made us feel it was still near us, but hiding. Our 20 gauge shotguns seemed to have shrunk.
Also, when we arrived at the top, we found a log had been dragged across the path leading out through the briars. It was now getting even darker. We had to get moving. Twenty minutes later we were driving the old truck back up the old wood's road toward home.
3. ORB AT WARRIOR'S TRAIL - Whiteley Creek is a trout stream in southwestern Pennsylvania.
It flows
eastward from Kirby through Garard's Fort to the Monongahela river near Greensboro.
Along the way it passes below a ridge where the native American tribes had a foot path called Warrior's Trail. It runs for 67 miles from Greensboro to the east bank of the Ohio River following along ridges that form a natural divide between watersheds. Hence, there are no streams to ford along the stream's entire length, which is incredible since a stream is found at the base of every hill, and there are 560 square miles in Greene County with thousands of hills.
Warrior's Trail was created by the feet of native tribes beginning 3,000 before Christ was born. This is an old area. When following the trail through the woods, and the scattered intermittent small meadows, it seems you really can feel the presence of someone.
Near Garard's Fort there used to be a red
covered bridge over Whiteley Creek. About 10:30 pm one evening near the end of October 1972 my friend, Pete Fields, and I decided to take Ranger my Airedale, for a walk in the woods . We chose the wooded valley just east of the bridge.
Referring to the picture on the left, the Warrior's trail was high on the ridge that paralleled the stream on the right side. On the left side of the stream, set back into the trees 80 yards or so, was a parallel railroad track used to haul coal to barge loading facilities the Monongahela river from the western part of Greene county.
We entered the valley on the right side of the stream heading for a big left hand bend about a hundred yards farther down. Talking as we walked, we relived some fox hunting experiences. Then Pete looked up past me toward the lower end of a meadow that reached down from Warrior's Trail to a steep bank at the edge of the woods saying, "I wonder who that is?"
I turned to see a green light coming down
through the overgrown meadow, heading straight for us. They were a long way off, maybe 150 yards or so. We just waited, watching it zig zagging from time as if someone was walking around an obstruction on the ground.
"It's probably the Game Commission", I told Pete, "I just realized this is the first night of trapping season. Someone must have seen our light from the road, and may have called them thinking we were messing with their traps. Just stand here and let them come. We're okay."
"Why do they have a green light?", Pete asked, "it doesn't even have a beam to it. How can you see where your going with a light like that?"
The light just stood at the top of the bank for a minute then slowly came down to our level on an angle as anyone would while descending over something too steep to take head on.
I had our three cell flaslight pointed at the ground all this while when the green light went out. Ranger trotted right through the beam of our light and into the darkness directly toward the bank. I expected to hear some voices when that happened but there was nothing. Ranger didn't return, the light didn't come back on, and no one said anything to us.
"Do you really think that is the Game Commission?", Pete asked.
"I don't know now", I said.
"Let's just continue walking down along the
creek like we were going to do and see what happens", I said.
So we did. We just slowly started walking as if nothing had happened. I expected to see bright lights flash on followed by, "Hold it right there", but we didn't.
We walked down along the right side of the creek without incident. The steep bank to our right
was about 50 feet away, but as we walked, it crowed us closer and closer to the edge of the stream
. The left side of the bank also descended in such a way as it came closer that we were able to get over it in just two steps. From there, the forest widened significantly on both sides of the stream.
We walked in without Ranger as the woods widened out before us. Hearing a noise in the leaves behind we turned to see him trotting toward us wagging his tail with his tongue hanging out. The three of us moved on with our one flashlight panning the area before us, and scanning the tree tops above us.
Whiteley is a tricky and dangerous stream, shallow enough to walk across in places. Yet, in other places you can't touch bottom. There are smooth flat rock bottoms in places where the water moves in fast rapids. There are other places where bends widen out and the flow slows down almost to a stop.
About five years before this walk, a young trapper fell through the ice while crossing from one side to the other to check his trap line. The ice was thin because the water was flowing rapidly. However, it was one of the fast flowing places in Whiteley where it also had a deep hole in the bottom just downstream. He was pulled to that hole under the ice.
Our plan was to walk along the right side, through the trees all the way to a place I knew where we could remove our boots and walk across to the other side in about a foot of water. The creek was about fifty or sixty feet wide in that area, but it was shallow and safe.
We walked along talking and checking out the woods ahead of us. As time passed I figured we were about 300 yards away from our crossing point when Pete asked, "Where is Ranger?".
"He's out in front of us somewhere, I answered, "It might have been a mistake to bring him", I answered, "I forgot this was the first night of trapping season, I hope he doesn't get into anyone's trap".
"Are you sure he's out in front of us?", Pet asked.
"Yes", I answered,"why?".
" Well", Pet answered, I've been hearing something back there following us for a while. I thought it was him".
You can't keep your light on a dog when your in the woods at night. They travel everywhere around you as you walk. They come into the light and go back out of it all the time.
Just then, Ranger came trotting back into the light right in front of Pete.
I put my hand out and felt for the door handle as I turned to see if the light was still following me, expecting to see it back a quarter mile or so near the bend.
I was shocked to see the thing no more than thirty feet away! It just hung there about six or seven feet off of the ground. It swayed back and forth two or three times then went out before I could even get the door open. I was convinced that I had been followed up the tracks by something intelligent, but I never got to see what it really was. Was it one of our unseen neighbor's?
In conclusion, I will repeat an earlier paragraph from part 1 of this same experience.
Here it is: "Emanuel Swedenborg speaks of people gravitating either toward, or away from, one another in the afterlife depending on whether they have similar likes and dislikes. Having traveled to another dimension in spirit, he relays the time he was talking with some local spirits when the air near them began to glow and then it began to take on the form of a face. As it progressed, the rest of the body started to come into view. However, the entering spirit entity soon realized it didn't meld well with those particular spirit beings, so instead of manifesting in their presence to make contact with them, it faded back out of view and simply returned to the locale where it had come from. (Sound familiar to any Sasquatch hunters out there?)"
To learn more about Emanuel Swedenborg click the follwing links: LINK 1, LINK 2.
Also, see the right hand column of this page.
2. SOMETHING BIG IN THE BEECHES - In the fall of 1970 my brother and I decided we would go squirrel hunting in a remote set of woods bordered on one side by a large tract of abandoned farm l
an old lane leading to the apple shed, we walked on. Reaching the shed, we pressed on through the barrier of briars that led eastward toward the Monongahela River. The briar field was the final resting place of what once was a thriving orchard on the hill top above the woods we referred to simply as the Beeches.
 |
| Old lane to apple shed |
As a huge valley leading downhill toward the river away from the briars, it was populated with old growth beech, oak, poplar, maple and other hardwood species. Had it been spring or summer I would've expected to hear the solitary song of the Wood Thrush. But, it was autumn and we had to hurry. The sun was going down fast.
After fighting our way
toward the trees, we quickly walked away from each other in a “V” shape as we entered the trees so as to separate quickly. We hoped we might have maybe 45 minutes lef t to hunt while letting the woods quiet down.
We usually used .22 caliber rifles to hunt squirrels, but this time we both carried a Ruger .22 magnum caliber pistol for squirrel and a single barrel 20 gauge shotgun for grouse.
We
called it the Beeches; and it did have a lot of Beech trees in it,
but there were many other hardwoods also. It had many banks and
ravines leading away and slightly downward as we walked in, all
covered in leaves and really old dead logs.I used up ten minutes walking very slowly before sitting down on an inviting log. To my right, the log continued on into an under story of huckleberry, dogwood, red bud and other bushes.
 |
| Ruffed Grouse |
Then a motion in my peripheral vision on my
I drew a bead on him with the 20 gauge but didn't shoot. I relaxed the hammer and lowered the shotgun thinking, "If a hunter gets a grouse on the wing, he surely deserves it. But shooting a drunken one while walking on a log just isn't right".
I was thinking this over when back up through the woods behind me something let out a warhoop that would startle a moose!
"What is that!", I wondered.
Just then, my brother, who had been working his way back toward me asked, "What the heck
"I don't know", I said, "What do you think it was?"
Shaking his head from side to side as he walked up to me, he said, "I'd have to say a bear, but I don't think even a bear could make a noise as loud as that was".
He was too far to my left to get a look at what I saw, but I saw it. It did look closer to a bear than anything else I could think of. It was bigger than any man I ever saw and strong enough to sway the crown of a twenty five foot tall locust tree back back and forth ten or fifteen feet. I looked for the tree to snap off.
Through the following 40 years I just considered it was a bear not desiring to pursue it any further , however, I did wonder how a bear could pull a tree back as violently as it had pushed it. Their paws aren't designed for pulling like a hand is.
In order to get back to the truck we had to leave the woods directly through the locust grove at the top exactly where the tree had been shaking so violently. However, whatever had been shaking it had simply disappeared. A squirrel can be heard running away, but why couldn't something bigger than a bear be heard? That made us feel it was still near us, but hiding. Our 20 gauge shotguns seemed to have shrunk.
Also, when we arrived at the top, we found a log had been dragged across the path leading out through the briars. It was now getting even darker. We had to get moving. Twenty minutes later we were driving the old truck back up the old wood's road toward home.
3. ORB AT WARRIOR'S TRAIL - Whiteley Creek is a trout stream in southwestern Pennsylvania.
 |
| Garard's Fort historical marker |
Along the way it passes below a ridge where the native American tribes had a foot path called Warrior's Trail. It runs for 67 miles from Greensboro to the east bank of the Ohio River following along ridges that form a natural divide between watersheds. Hence, there are no streams to ford along the stream's entire length, which is incredible since a stream is found at the base of every hill, and there are 560 square miles in Greene County with thousands of hills.
Warrior's Trail was created by the feet of native tribes beginning 3,000 before Christ was born. This is an old area. When following the trail through the woods, and the scattered intermittent small meadows, it seems you really can feel the presence of someone.
Near Garard's Fort there used to be a red
 |
| Red Covered Bridge |
 |
| Pete Fields |
I turned to see a green light coming down
 |
| Green Orb |
"It's probably the Game Commission", I told Pete, "I just realized this is the first night of trapping season. Someone must have seen our light from the road, and may have called them thinking we were messing with their traps. Just stand here and let them come. We're okay."
"Why do they have a green light?", Pete asked, "it doesn't even have a beam to it. How can you see where your going with a light like that?"
The light just stood at the top of the bank for a minute then slowly came down to our level on an angle as anyone would while descending over something too steep to take head on.
 |
| Airedale |
"Do you really think that is the Game Commission?", Pete asked.
"I don't know now", I said.
"Let's just continue walking down along the
So we did. We just slowly started walking as if nothing had happened. I expected to see bright lights flash on followed by, "Hold it right there", but we didn't.We walked down along the right side of the creek without incident. The steep bank to our right
 |
| Bend in creek |
About five years before this walk, a young trapper fell through the ice while crossing from one side to the other to check his trap line. The ice was thin because the water was flowing rapidly. However, it was one of the fast flowing places in Whiteley where it also had a deep hole in the bottom just downstream. He was pulled to that hole under the ice.
Our plan was to walk along the right side, through the trees all the way to a place I knew where we could remove our boots and walk across to the other side in about a foot of water. The creek was about fifty or sixty feet wide in that area, but it was shallow and safe.
We walked along talking and checking out the woods ahead of us. As time passed I figured we were about 300 yards away from our crossing point when Pete asked, "Where is Ranger?".
"He's out in front of us somewhere, I answered, "It might have been a mistake to bring him", I answered, "I forgot this was the first night of trapping season, I hope he doesn't get into anyone's trap".
"Are you sure he's out in front of us?", Pet asked.
"Yes", I answered,"why?".
" Well", Pet answered, I've been hearing something back there following us for a while. I thought it was him".
You can't keep your light on a dog when your in the woods at night. They travel everywhere around you as you walk. They come into the light and go back out of it all the time.
Just then, Ranger came trotting back into the light right in front of Pete.
To go to OUR UNSEEN NEIGHBORS (part 3) click HERE.
To go to back to OUR UNSEEN NEIGHBORS (part 1) click HERE.
To go to back to OUR UNSEEN NEIGHBORS (part 1) click HERE.
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