The Bruffy’s Creek Yayhoo
by Devin McCoy
It was early fall, I was camping on a private piece of land in Bruffy’s Creek. The tract of land borders the outer most region of the Cranberry Wilderness. I was alone on this trip for some reason and uncharacteristically forgot my rifle. But I had my trusty pistol with me. I managed to shoot a couple squirrels, first shot, too. I’ve always hated wasting ammo but I’ll have to admit I impressed myself with how good of a shot I was. I built the campfire up in preparation for the sun to go down and put the fresh squirrel on the fire to cook. As it was cooking the aroma was quite pleasant as it sizzled.
As darkness came, I ate dinner, stoked the fire, and eased into my sleeping bag beside it. I closed my eyes and began to drift off. Just when I was about asleep – like the moment your briefly between sleep and consciousness – something happened which I have trouble explaining. From the wilderness, came a blood curdling scream that brought me back from dream land to earth as I awoke with pure terror. I sat up and listened. I thought, what was that? Am I hearing things? As I listened with confusion and anticipation, it came again. It was so loud and powerful that I felt it in my chest and it echoed through the hollers six or eight times. Whatever it was, it was BIG, and sounded like it was right on top of me as if just out of sight from the light of the fire. I was frozen in fear, listening and waiting for it to come out of the shadows for me. Then, a horrendous deafening growl radiated through the woods on the other side of me. I was surrounded. I grabbed my light from my bag, unholstered my gun and did a complete circle but saw nothing. As I began another sweep, two glowing yellow eyes appeared. Now, I know what you’re thinking at this point, because I was thinking it, too. This couldn’t be what I think it is – could it? I mean surely those things don’t really exist. Surely there is a logical explanation for what’s happening. Wait just a darn minute. Get ahold of yourself. You’re jumping to conclusions. You haven’t even seen what’s behind those yellow eyes yet.
Those were the thoughts that rushed through my head in an instant as I stare at whatever this is – as it stares back at me. Then it got daylight as I’m still standing there looking for it. I guess I lost it at some point I don’t really know what happened to it or how the night seemed to pass by so quickly. But I snapped out of it and began to pack up my things so I could get the heck out of there; when I heard a crashing sound and looked up to see a tree a few yards away crashing to the ground. Then, “it” stepped into view. I was looking at an eight foot tall four foot wide “Wildman of the forest.”
I was more scared than I have ever been in my life and in disbelief all at the same time. It snarled and began to come at me aggressively. I raised my pistol to shoot. I pulled the trigger and began to fall. Fall from dream land back to earth, yet again. I woke up in my bed. I will never watch “Finding Bigfoot again.”