Real-life spooky encounters in the Triad? You decide.

We asked readers to send in stories of real-life scary encounters they’ve experienced in the Triad. The following are episodes that readers sent in for this year’s round-up. The validity of these stories has not been confirmed by the newsroom. Read on and decide for yourself, if you dare.

A monster at the quarry

Sent in by Georgie K.

My best friend and I were at the old quarry in Grant Park. It was late evening and we were there to catch the sunset at the lookout. The park is usually busy during the day, but it was just starting to get cold. In the off season, sometimes you’ll be the only one there if you go close to dusk. You drive down a long, winding road to get to the lookout, and we were the only car on the road.

We’d filled thermoses with hot chocolate and brought blankets to lay out. At first, I was excited. But the further we got down the road, the more uneasy I felt. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. I couldn’t focus on anything. The movement of the trees off the road was making me nervous. With each new stretch of the road our headlights illuminated, I kept expecting to see someone standing there beside the trees. I couldn’t say why, I just had the sense that there was someone else nearby.

And then, a few hundred feet from the lookout, the music on our car speakers started to cut out. I figured it was our reception. It was static at first, a few fragments of the song, and then nothing. “Whatever,” my friend said, “we’re almost there.” I sat the rest of the drive up in silence. She was talking, but I couldn’t tell you what she said. I wasn’t paying attention.

The sky was a beautiful pink-purple. I remember that. I still have the pictures. They look dull in comparison to what we really saw. It was like a watercolor painting. It was so beautiful. But I was still trying to shake the feeling that something was wrong.

We parked in the lot and unloaded our blankets and picnic basket. The trees were still swaying, our headlights shining bright into the bank of them. They were about 50 feet ahead of us, I think. It was just too far off for me to be confident in what I saw.

I could have sworn something moved there. There was a flash of red and a faint cracking sound. I asked my friend to look too, and she stared into the trees for a second. She shrugged it off and told me to stop it. She said I was trying to freak her out. I wasn’t trying to, but my nerves were on edge. I couldn’t help it.

There were no other cars in the parking lot. It was probably a deer, I figured. I’d read that they were crepuscular, which means that they’re mostly active during the dusk and the dawn hours. That fit. So it was nothing, I decided.

We climbed up to the lookout. There’s a big metal pier there that extends out over the remnants of the old quarry. When they stopped using it for mining back in the ’70s it slowly filled with water. Now, it is a deep lake bordered by high cliffs and scrubby foliage. In the summer, the pier is perfect for watching the kayakers below. At night, the waters are smooth and almost black.

We laid out our blanket at the edge of the pier. We sat out there suspended a hundred feet over the dark, still water. I’d spiked my hot chocolate with something a little stronger, and I was starting to feel a little better. We were talking, eventually laying out on our backs looking up at the changing colors of the sky. For a few hours it was fine. The pink faded to oranges and purples and, finally, a navy — almost black. The stars looked bright out over the water.

And then I heard the snap. I sat up. I couldn’t see anything at first. The overlook is walled in on either side to keep people from falling over the edge. All we could see was the entrance to the long, narrow pier. It was almost pitch black now. There was nothing there.

But my friend was sitting up now too, because she’d heard it as well. I felt frozen. We were almost pressed up against the edge of the pier. There was nowhere to go, hanging suspended a hundred feet up over the water. It felt like the metal structure was shifting with the wind.

The sound came again: a snap, and then a shuffling. And then I heard something scrape against metal. I reached for my phone. I don’t think I was even breathing. I was scared even the brightness of my screen would draw attention to us. I turned on my flashlight before my friend could yell at me to stop. I don’t know what I was thinking.

For a fraction of a second we saw it in the beam of the flashlight. It was five, maybe six feet tall. The light reflected red off of its eyes. Its face was a fleshy, drawn smile, and for just a moment I could see the folds of its wrinkled, pig-like nose. It stood blocking the exit of the pier. I dropped my phone, and it skidded several feet from us, the beam of the flashlight still on. We could see its strange, clawed feet gripping onto the entrance to the pier.

I remember that my friend screamed. I don’t know if I made any sound at all. I scooted backwards towards the edge of the pier. We saw it step forward. One clawed foot, then the other, and then it was running along the pier. I only saw a glimpse of its hairy body in the beam of the flashlight. I screamed, then. I think I closed my eyes. The next thing I remember is getting hit with a strong gust of air that knocked me back against the edge of the pier. When I opened my eyes, it was gone. I scrambled forward for my phone.

Without my friend, I wouldn’t have noticed it. But I followed her gaze up. Together, we watched the thing disappear into the black sky, its huge wings spread out blocking the light from the moon.

I haven’t been back to the quarry park since.

A late-night trash run

Sent in by Olivia Morrison

It’s not my story, but it happened to a coworker of mine. So me and this girl work at a print shop in Kernersville. I’ve been there a year now, and she’s the owner’s daughter so she’s been there longer. When I started, she told me I should always make sure to take out the trash early before the last person left. When I asked her why she told me that there was this one night when she was taking out the trash that something weird happened.

She said she was closing up by herself, and that’s how it always is because it’s just one person on the closing shift. That’s one of the reasons I like this job because our shifts are staggered so if you get in the latest you leave the latest and vice versa.

We usually just lock up and bag up all of the waste and put it out in the dumpster that’s by the woods at the end of the street. So she was doing that and she said she saw a guy going through the trash — but like a really big guy, almost seven feet tall wearing this big backpack on his back. She said he was basically in the dumpster with the lid open going through it, and she didn’t realize how big he was until he stood up and looked at her and then she realized there was something really wrong about his face. She couldn’t really tell me what it was. When I asked her about it she said he didn’t say anything to her just stared at her so she turned around and left the trash inside until the next morning. That scared me so much I think about it all the time.

Encounters with the Bat Creature

Sent in by Haleigh Colombo

I’m a second-shift custodian, so most nights after work I have to do a mad dash to my car in the middle of the night. There have been two occasions where I’ve seen something unusual.

The first time I was barely awake and running on around five cups of coffee. I finally clocked out and made my way into the parking lot which is pretty large, surrounded by a lot of trees, and only has a few lights by the building. I was pretty out of it, so when I saw something red outside the trees I just assumed it was one of my coworker’s taillights. But as I was driving away, I realized the only coworker I worked with had left an hour before me.

I had completely forgotten about that whole experience until a few weeks later when I was leaving work again and stopped to smoke (I’m now in the process of quitting though!). I heard some rustling and assumed it was just another deer, so I quietly shifted closer and that’s when I saw it. I know it’s a terrible name, but I’ve been calling it the Bat Creature. It genuinely looked like an 8-foot tall bat with long legs and hands crouched up high on a tree. It also had bright red reflecting eyes (kind of like how a cat’s eyes reflect), which makes me think it was what I saw before. I watched it for a few seconds and then it stiffened up and seemed to vanish instantaneously.

So I guess keep a look out for the bat creature.