The Walk Down the Holler

Location: East Tennessee

Classification: Witness Account / Unidentified Presence

Status: Unresolved

Evidence Summary

When I was a kid, I walked down the holler alone every morning to catch the school bus.

Most mornings it was still dark.

That was when something began following me.

I never saw it. I only heard branches breaking and footsteps pushing through the dead leaves inside the tree line. If I walked faster, it kept pace. If I slowed down, it slowed with me.

My father said it was probably a bobcat.

I accepted that because the alternative was walking the same road each morning believing something wanted me.

It never came onto the road. It never growled or called out. It simply followed until I reached the place where the other children waited.

Then the woods went quiet.

This happened for months. Eventually it stopped, and I grew up without ever learning what it was.

Last year, I returned home for a funeral and ran into one of the girls who had waited for the bus with me. We talked about the old road and how frightened I had been of the animal in the woods.

She stopped smiling.

“That wasn’t an animal,” she said.

I asked how she knew.

“Because we could see him after you reached us.”

I reminded her that the sound always stopped.

“He stopped walking,” she said. “He didn’t leave.”

She told me a man would stand between the trees and watch us until the bus carried me away. None of the children mentioned him because they assumed I knew who he was.

“We thought he was your father,” she said. “Until I saw you today.”

She stared at my face for a long time.

“You finally grew into him.”